MIAMI– The dated gold and silver trophies kept in the china cabinet Vivek Murthy The childhood home still boasts the surgeon general’s many talents, from dance performances to math competitions.
Growing up in a Florida suburb, it seemed to his family that Murthy could succeed at just about anything.
But when a high school world history teacher suggested he might one day make a good secretary of state, his mother staged an intervention.
“She was very worried,” Murthy said in an exclusive interview with the Associated Press last month, as her mother laughed as she told the story. “She called my dad. She said, ‘You need to go home and talk to him because he’s thinking about going into politics.'”
Now, in his second term as “Doctor of the Nation”, Murthy has not run away from politics, as his mother had hoped. He is in charge of this.
He took over powerful technology companiesaccusing its addictive algorithms and dangerous content of negatively affecting children’s mental health. Earlier this year, he even asked Congress to approve a general surgeon’s alert etiquette on social media, on platforms like Instagram or TikTok. In June, Murthy released his most politically charged text report yet, declaring that deaths and injuries from firearms in America they reached such a critical mass that they created a public health crisis.
Republicans have long feared that Murthy had plans to declare gun violence a public health crisis, speculation that nearly derailed his first nomination for office by Democratic President Barack Obama a decade ago.
Murthy attracted Obama’s attention while Murthy worked as an internist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, when he brought together thousands of doctors to lobby for passage of the Affordable Care Act. The political organization also led him to his wife, Alice Chen, who signed his letters from Los Angeles, where she worked as a doctor. The two bonded through texts and phone calls across different time zones.
But Murthy comments on social media describing guns as a “health issue” caused a delay in his confirmation and left the country without a surgeon general for more than a year, with even some Democrats refusing to approve him. Republican President Donald Trump immediately fired Murthy.
Murthy was reconfirmed under the Biden administration in 2021, with the support of all Democratic senators and a handful of Republicans. He has an annual salary of $191,900.
As surgeon general, Murthy has remained largely silent on gun violence, until now.
He points out that the numbers changed after he became surgeon general for the second time: gun violence became the leading cause of death for children in the US, surpassing car accidents and cancer in 2021. More than 4,752 children died from firearms injuries that year, says a study from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The too-terrible-to-ignore stories he heard while crisscrossing the country on listening tours helped define the issues he chooses to weigh in on, he said.
There was his grandmother who told him that she doesn’t send her grandson to school in light sneakers, in case he attracts the attention of a school shooter. And the mother who, after surviving a shooting, always reconsidered leaving the house in sandals, in case she had to flee another.
“When you hear these stories over and over again from middle school students, high school students and college students, these stories stick with you,” Murthy said. “It was inevitable to me that we needed to do something about it.”
Murthy’s report is full of statistics that show gun deaths, suicides and injuries are getting worse. He concludes by saying that Congress should act – with laws that ban large-capacity magazines for civilian use, require universal background checks for gun purchases, restrict their use in public spaces, and penalize people who fail to store their guns safely. .
The reaction was predictable. Doctors and Democrats praised him. Republicans scoffed. The National Rifle Association called Murthy’s report a “war on law-abiding citizens.” Sen. Mike Braun, R-India, accused him of “turning his head,” noting that Murthy told him gun violence would not be a focus of his term.
Murthy believes his report, which lacks teeth, can move the conversation forward, if only a little. He spoke to the AP just four days after Trump was cut in the ear by a would-be assassin’s bullet during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. There have been few calls for action on guns after the latest shooting to shock the nation.
“My hope is that we can look at this as a polarizing, political issue and see it for what it really is, which is a public health problem that affects all of us, from people in small communities in America to people running for high office. . in our land,” Murthy said.
The surgeon general is also emphasizing a different side effect of gun violence: the impact on mental health. He devotes an entire chapter and four pages of his 40-page report to the issue, noting that half of American teens ages 14 to 17 worry about school shootings.
The demise of Americans’ mental health, an issue that appears to have bipartisan interest in Congress but little consensus on how to address it, has been a theme in nearly every report released during Murthy’s second term.
Former surgeons general rarely assessed mental health so robustly.
Many focused on physical health: alcohol and drug abuse, smoking, breastfeeding, exercise and healthy bones, for example. Murthy, in his reports, has spent the last three years investigating the impact of social media on youth, loneliness, health worker burnout and misinformation.
These are issues he did not expect to address when he was appointed to the role more than a decade ago.
But Murthy sees them as problems that are harming Americans’ overall health.
Loneliness skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic, as people eliminated their friend groups and reduced the time they spent in person with those friends — down to an all-time low of just 20 minutes every day. The state of loneliness, Murthy concluded in its 2023 findingscan increase the risk of premature death by 30%.
Murthy spent his time during the pandemic and in between consulting and giving speeches. He raised $2 million working with companies like Netflix, Airbnb and Carnival Cruises, and wrote a book, “Together,” focused on loneliness.
In this book, he tells how he felt unprepared to deal with the impact that loneliness had on the health and happiness of his patients. His reports could change that for future doctors.
“The response has been overwhelmingly positive, not just from the public but also from medical and public health professionals,” Murthy said. “And I have a theory about why, which is that doctors are actually seeing loneliness and mental health challenges on the front lines, in exam rooms, in hospitals, every day.”
After his term ends in March, Murthy doesn’t know what’s next. But he said he still wants to focus on mental health and loneliness.
Murthy traces his interest in eradicating loneliness to the Miami suburbs, where he retreated last month with his wife and two young children to spend a few summer days under the palm trees of his childhood home, alongside his parents, sister and grandmother. .
It was here that he says he learned more about the power of relationships. First, watching his parents, immigrants from India, work hard to create a community of their own in a city where they didn’t know anyone when they arrived decades ago. The pair launched a weekend school for the children of other Indian immigrants to learn about the culture and music of their homeland.
As he grew older, he helped his mother in his father’s family medical practice. When tragedy struck, he went with them to visit patients’ homes, including a trip to visit a grieving widow in the middle of the night.
“They taught me from a very early age that people are everything,” Murthy said of his parents, Myetraie and Hallegere. “Whenever they had a patient in need, a friend who lost their job or a loved one, they were there on the phone or in person, bringing food or just sitting by the bed and holding their hand.”
Even with the humidity and heat of July, her family crowds the kitchen to fry dosas, an Indian crepe, and kesari bath, a sweet mixture of raisins and wheat, in the hot oven. Her mother fills plastic bags with food, insisting that everyone visiting the house takes one home. Murthy’s 7-year-old son wraps himself around his father – and won’t let go – as dinner is served in the kitchen.
It’s a long-standing tradition for the Murthys.
Decades ago, after finishing homework, the family would have dinner together every night, Hallegere Murthy said. He even tells his own patients to treat family dinners as a “therapeutic session” and recommends they put away their cell phones while chatting at the dinner table.
“I always tell my patients that family unity and family interaction are very important, especially if the only time you can all interact is during dinner time,” said Hallegere Murthy.
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