MIAMI (AP) — The vintage gold and silver trophies in the display case of Dr. Vivek Murthy’s childhood home still testify to the Surgeon General’s many talents, 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 one day make a good 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 on powerful tech companies, accusing them of their addictive algorithms and unsafe content negatively affecting children’s mental health. Earlier this year, he went so far as to ask Congress to approve a Health and Human Services warning label for social media sites like Instagram or TikTok. In June, Murthy released his most politically charged report yet, declaring that the number of firearm deaths and injuries in America had reached such a critical mass that it had created a public health crisis.
A focus on weapons
Republicans had long feared that Murthy planned to declare gun violence a public health crisis, speculation that nearly 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 thousands 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 doctor. The two became friends through text messages and phone calls across time zones.
But Murthy’s social media comments calling guns a “health issue” delayed his confirmation and left the country without a surgeon general for more than a year. Even some Democrats refused to confirm him. 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 so far remained largely noiseless on the issue of gun violence.
He points out that the numbers have changed since he became Surgeon General for the second time: Gun violence became the leading cause of death among children in the United States in 2021, surpassing car accidents and cancer. More than 4,752 children died from gunshot wounds that year, according to a study by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The stories he heard on his fact-finding trips around the country, which were too horrific to ignore, helped him decide which issues he wanted to take a stand on, he says.
There was the grandmother who told him she didn’t send her grandson to school in light-up sneakers for fear they would attract the attention of a school shooter. And the mother who, after surviving a school shooting, still thought twice about leaving the house in flip-flops in case she had to flee another 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 full of 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 utilize, requiring universal background checks on gun purchases, restricting their utilize in public spaces and punishing people who don’t store their guns safely.
The reaction 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 pointed out that Murthy had told him that gun violence would not be a focus of his term.
Murthy believes his report, which is of no utilize, could at least move the discussion forward a little. He spoke to AP just four days after Trump was shot in the ear by an assassin during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. There have been few calls for action 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 running for high office in our country,” Murthy said.
The Health Secretary also highlights another side effect of gun violence: the psychological consequences. He devotes an entire chapter and four pages of his 40-page report to this topic, noting that half of all U.S. teenagers between the ages of 14 and 17 are afraid of school shootings.
Americans’ mental health is deteriorating
The decline in Americans’ mental health – an issue that has received bipartisan interest in Congress but little consensus on how to address it – has been the subject of nearly every report released during Murthy’s second term.
Rarely in the past have general practitioners spoken so comprehensively about mental health.
Many have focused on physical health: alcohol and drug abuse, smoking, breastfeeding, exercise and fit bones, for example. Murthy has spent the last three years of his reports looking at the impact of social media on youth, loneliness, health worker 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 that are affecting the overall health of Americans.
Loneliness skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic as people broke up their circles of friends and reduced the amount 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 from his 2023 findings, can boost the risk of premature death by 30%.
Murthy spent his time during the pandemic and between semesters consulting and speaking. He earned $2 million working for companies like Netflix, Airbnb and Carnival Cruises and wrote a book about loneliness called “Together.”
In this book, he shares how unprepared he felt to deal with 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 will do next, but he said he wants to continue to focus 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 with his wife and two youthful children to spend a few summer days with his parents, sister and grandmother under the palm trees of his childhood home.
It was here that he learned the most about the power of relationships, he says. First, he watched his parents, immigrants from India, work strenuous to build their own community in a town where they knew no one when they arrived decades ago. The couple started 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 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 in the sweltering July heat, his family huddles in the kitchen to cook dosas, an Indian crepe, and kesari bath, a sweet wheat mixture with raisins, over the warm oven. His mother stuffs plastic bags with food and insists that every visitor to the house take one home. Murthy’s seven-year-old son wraps himself around his father – and doesn’t let go – as dinner is served in 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 think of family meals as a “therapeutic session” and recommends that they put away their cell phones while chatting at 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.
