Surgeon General enters political fray despite mother’s warning

Growing up in suburban Florida, it seemed to his family that Murthy could accomplish almost anything.

But when a middle school world history teacher suggested he might one day make a good secretary of state, his mother staged an intervention.

“She became very worried,” Murthy said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press last month, as his mother giggled at his retelling. “He called my father. She said, “You have to come home and talk to him because he’s thinking about going into politics.”

Now in his second term as the “Nation’s Doctor”, Murthy has not run away from politics as his mother had hoped. He is accused of this.

He took on powerful tech companies, accusing their addictive algorithms and dangerous content of harming children’s mental health. Earlier this year, he went so far as to ask Congress to approve a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok. In June, Murthy released his most charged policy report to date, declaring that gun deaths and injuries in America have reached such a critical mass that they have created a public health crisis.

An emphasis on weapons

Republicans had long feared that Murthy harbored no plans 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 came to Obama’s attention while Murthy was working as an internist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, when he rallied thousands of doctors to lobby for the Affordable Care Act. Political organizing also led him to his wife, Alice Chen, who signed his letters from Los Angeles, where he worked as a doctor. The two bonded over text messages and phone calls across time zones.

But Murthy’s comments on social media describing guns as “a health care issue” triggered a delay in his confirmation and left the country without a surgeon general for more than a year, with even some Democrats refusing to endorse him. Republican President Donald Trump immediately fired Murthy.

Murthy was reconfirmed under the Biden administration in 2021 with the support of every Democratic senator 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 have changed since he became surgeon general for the second time: Gun violence has become the leading killer of children in the US, surpassing car accidents and cancer in 2021. More than 4,752 children died from gunshot wounds. firearms that year, a study by the American Academy of Pediatrics says.

The too-horrific-to-ignore stories he heard while criss-crossing the country on listening tours helped shape the issues he decides to weigh in on, he said.

It was the grandmother who told him not to send her grandson to school in light-up sneakers, in case he might attract the attention of a school shooter. And the mom who, after surviving one mass shooting, always reconsidered leaving the house in flip-flops in case she had to run from another.

“When you hear these stories over and over again from middle schoolers, high schoolers and college students, those stories stick with you,” Murthy said. “To me it was inevitable that we had to do something about it.”

Murthy’s report is full of statistics showing that gun deaths, suicides and injuries are getting worse. He concludes by saying that Congress should act — with laws that ban high-capacity magazines for civilian use, require universal background checks for gun purchases, restrict their use in public spaces, and penalize people who don’t store their guns safely.

The reaction was predictable. Doctors and Democrats praised him. scoffed the Republicans. The National Rifle Association called Murthy’s report a “war on law-abiding citizens.” Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., accused him of “flip-flopping,” noting that Murthy told him that gun violence would not be a focus of his term.

Murthy believes his report, which has no teeth, could move the conversation, even just a little. He sat down with the AP just four days after Trump was hit in the ear with a bullet from an alleged assassin during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. No gun action was called for after the latest shooting to shock the nation.

“My hope is that we can move away from looking at it as a political and polarizing issue and see it for what it is, which is a public health issue that affects all of us, from people in small communities across America to the people. .. who are running for high office. in our land,” Murthy said.

The surgeon general also points to a different side effect of gun violence: the mental health toll. He devotes an entire chapter and four pages of his 40-page report to the issue, noting that half of American teenagers between the ages of 14 and 17 worry about school shootings.

Americans’ declining mental health

The demise of Americans’ mental health, a topic that appears to have bipartisan interest in Congress but little consensus on how to deal with it, has been a theme in nearly every report released during Murthy’s second term .

Former surgeons general have rarely considered mental health in such a robust way.

Many focused on physical health: alcohol and drug abuse, smoking, breastfeeding, exercise and healthy bones, for example. Murthy, in his reporting, has spent the past three years analyzing the impact of social media on youth, loneliness, health worker burnout and misinformation.

These are matters he did not expect to tackle when he was first appointed to the job more than a decade ago.

But Murthy sees them as problems affecting the overall health of Americans.

Loneliness has skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic, as people have eliminated their friend groups and reduced the amount of time they spend in person with those friends — to an all-time low of just 20 minutes each day. Loneliness, Murthy concluded in his 2023 findings, can increase the risk of premature death by 30 percent.

Murthy spent his time during the pandemic and between terms 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.

He shares in that book how he felt unprepared to deal with the impact 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 the medical and public health professions,” Murthy said. “And I have a theory why, which is that doctors actually see 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.

“People are everything”

Murthy pursues his interest in eradicating loneliness in the suburbs of Miami, where he retired last month with his wife and two young children to spend a few summer days under the palm trees of his childhood home with his parents, sister and grandmother.

This is where he says he learned the most about the power of relationships. First, watching his parents, immigrants from India, work hard to form a community of their own in a city where they knew no one 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 up, he helped his mother in the office of 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 young age that people are everything,” Murthy said of his parents, Myetraie and Hallegere. “Whenever they had a patient in need, a friend who lost a job or lost a loved one, they were there on the phone or in person, bringing food or just sitting by the bedside and holding them by hand.”

Even in the humidity and heat of July, his family huddles in the kitchen to fry dosa, an Indian pancake, and kesari dip, a sweet mixture of wheat and raisins, over the hot oven. His mother stuffs plastic bags full of food, insisting that any visitor to the house take 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 Murthy family.

Decades ago, after homework was done, the family had dinner together every night, Hallegere Murthy said. He still tells his own patients to treat family meals as a “therapy session” and recommends putting away their cellphones while catching up at the table.

“I always tell my patients that family unity and family interaction is very important, especially if the only time you can all interact is during dinner,” Hallegere Murthy said.