The dated gold and silver trophies within the showcase of Dr. Vivek Murthy The Surgeon General’s many talents can still be seen in his parents’ home today, from dance performances to math competitions.
Murthy grew up in a Florida suburb and his family believed he could succeed at virtually anything.
But when a middle school world history teacher suggested he might in the future make an excellent foreign minister, his mother intervened.
“She was really worried,” Murthy said in an exclusive interview with the Associated Press last month, as his mother giggled as he retold the story. “She called my father. She said, ‘You have to come home and talk to him because he’s thinking about going into politics.'”
In his second term as Doctor of the Nation, Murthy has not fled politics as his mother had hoped. He is charging straight into it.
He has taken over Powerful tech corporationsand accused its addictive algorithms and dangerous content of negatively impacting children’s mental health. Earlier this 12 months, he went thus far as to ask Congress to Surgeon General’s warning Label on social media, on platforms like Instagram or TikTok. In June, Murthy published his most politically explosive report still, declares that deaths and injuries attributable to firearms in America had reached such a critical mass that they triggered a public health crisis.
A concentrate on weapons
Republicans had long feared that Murthy planned to declare gun violence a public health crisis, speculation that just about derailed his first appointment to the post by Democratic President Barack Obama a decade ago.
Murthy caught Obama’s attention while working as an internist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where he rallied 1000’s of doctors to lobby for passage of the Affordable Care Act. The political organization also introduced him to his wife, Alice Chen, who signed his letters from Los Angeles, where she worked as a health care provider. The two became friends through text messages and phone calls across time zones.
But Murthy’s Social media comments Describing guns as a “health issue” led to a delay in his confirmation and left the country with no surgeon general for greater than a 12 months, with even some Democrats opposing his confirmation. Republican President Donald Trump promptly fired Murthy.
Murthy was reconfirmed in 2021 under the Biden administration with the support of all Democratic senators and a handful of Republicans. His annual salary is $191,900.
As Surgeon General, Murthy had thus far remained largely silent on the problem of gun violence.
He points out that the numbers have modified since he became Surgeon General for the second time: Gun violence became the leading reason behind death amongst U.S. children in 2021, surpassing automobile accidents and cancer. More than 4,752 children died from firearms injuries this 12 months, in keeping with a study by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The stories he heard on his fact-finding trips across the country, which were too horrific to disregard, helped him resolve which issues he desired to take a stand on, he says.
There was the grandmother who told him she didn’t send her grandson to high school in light-up sneakers for fear they might attract the eye of a college shooter. And the mother who, after surviving a college shooting, still thought twice about leaving the home in flip-flops in case she needed to flee one other school shooting.
“When you hear these stories over and over again from middle school, high school and college students, they stick with you,” Murthy said. “It was inevitable to me that we had to do something about it.”
Murthy’s report is filled with statistics showing that gun-related deaths, suicides and injuries are on the rise. He concludes that Congress should act – with laws banning high-capacity magazines for civilian use, requiring universal background checks on gun purchases, restricting their use in public spaces and punishing individuals who don’t store their guns safely.
The response was predictable. Doctors and Democrats praised the report. Republicans scoffed. The National Rifle Association called Murthy’s report a “war on law-abiding citizens.” Senator Mike Braun (R-Indiana) accused him of “rollbacks” and identified that Murthy had told him that gun violence wouldn’t be a spotlight of his term.
Murthy believes his report, which is of no use, could at the very least move the discussion forward somewhat. He spoke to AP just 4 days after Trump was shot within the ear by an assassin during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. There have been few calls for motion on guns following the recent shooting that shocked the nation.
“I hope we stop seeing this as a polarizing and political issue and start seeing it for what it is: a public health issue that affects all of us, from the people in America’s small communities to the people who seek high office in our country,” Murthy said.
The Health Secretary also highlights one other side effect of gun violence: the psychological consequences. He devotes a complete chapter and 4 pages of his 40-page report back to this topic, noting that half of all U.S. teenagers between the ages of 14 and 17 are afraid of college shootings.
Americans’ mental health is deteriorating
The decline in Americans’ mental health – a problem that has received bipartisan interest in Congress but little consensus on the right way to address it – has been the topic of nearly every report released during Murthy’s second term.
Rarely up to now have general practitioners spoken so comprehensively about mental health.
Many have focused on physical health: alcohol and drug abuse, smoking, breastfeeding, exercise and healthy bones, for instance. Murthy has spent the last three years of his reports the impact of social media on youth, loneliness, medical examiner burnout and misinformation.
He had not anticipated such issues when he was first appointed to this post over a decade ago.
But Murthy sees them as problems which are affecting the general health of Americans.
Loneliness skyrocketed in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic as people broke up their circles of friends and reduced the period of time they spent in person with those friends – to a historic low of just 20 minutes a day. The State of Loneliness, Murthy concluded in its 2023 resultscan increase the chance of premature death by 30%.
Murthy spent his time in the course of the pandemic and between semesters consulting and speaking. He earned $2 million working for corporations like Netflix, Airbnb and Carnival Cruises and wrote a book about loneliness called “Together.”
In this book, he shares how unprepared he felt to take care of the impact loneliness had on his patients’ health and happiness. His accounts may change that for future doctors.
“The response has been overwhelmingly positive, not only from the public but also from the medical and health community,” Murthy said. “And I have a theory as to why that is: Doctors see loneliness and mental health issues themselves in exam rooms and hospitals, every day.”
After his term ends in March, Murthy is unsure what he’ll do next, but he said he desires to proceed to concentrate on mental health and loneliness.
“People are everything”
His interest in eliminating loneliness dates back to the suburbs of Miami, where he retreated last month together with his wife and two young children to spend a couple of summer days together with his parents, sister and grandmother under the palm trees of his childhood home.
It was here that he learned essentially the most concerning the power of relationships, he says. First, he watched his parents, immigrants from India, work hard to construct their very own community in a town where they knew nobody after they arrived a long time ago. The couple began a weekend school for the kids of other Indian immigrants to learn concerning the culture and music of their homeland.
As he grew older, he helped his mother within the reception area of his father’s medical practice. When a tragedy struck, he accompanied her on home visits to patients, including a middle-of-the-night visit to a grieving widow.
“They taught me from a young age that people are everything,” Murthy said of his parents, Myetraie and Hallegere. “When they had a patient in need, a friend who lost their job or a loved one, they were there for them on the phone or in person, bringing food or just sitting by the bed and holding their hand.”
Even within the sweltering July heat, his family huddles within the kitchen to cook dosas, an Indian crepe, and kesari bath, a sweet wheat mixture with raisins, over the recent stove. His mother stuffs plastic bags with food and insists that each visitor to the home take one home. Murthy’s seven-year-old son wraps himself around his father – and doesn’t let go – as dinner is served within the kitchen.
It is a long-standing tradition of the Murthys.
Decades ago, families would eat dinner together every night after homework was done, Hallegere Murthy said. He still advises his own patients to consider family meals as a “therapeutic session” and recommends that they put away their cell phones while chatting on the dinner table.
“I always tell my patients that family unity and interaction within the family are very important, especially when the only opportunity to interact is during dinner,” said Hallegere Murthy.
