US surgeon general was warned by his mom to avoid politics, but he jumped into the fray anyway

The old gold and silver trophies in the china cabinet of Dr Viviek Murthy’s childhood home in North Carolina demonstrate the many string talents of the surgeon general such as dancing, drama, acrobatics, music, maths and talent shows. 
 
He was born and raised in a suburb of Florida and it appeared to his family that Murthy could not fail at anything. 
 
But one day, the moment a middle school world history teacher opined that he might well end up as secretary of state someday, his mom decided to intervene. 
 
Murthy recalled during an exclusive interview with The Associated Press last month “She got really worried. ” As he said it, his mom again chuckled at his rendition of the event. ‘She called my dad one day and told him ‘You have to come home and see him because he wants to go into politics’. ” 
 
Now as the second term “Nation’s Doctor” on the same position, Murthy has not retreated from the political as his mother wished. He’s charged toward it. 
 
They were powerful and he knew it – with algorithms compelling people to spend hours on apps and reposting material that is dangerous for the developing mind and spirit of children. In a similar vein, earlier this year, he called upon Congress to pass legislation that would allow the inclusion of a ‘Surgeon General Warning’ on social media, be it Instagram, TikTok or the likes. In June, Murthy issued what is potentially his most provocative report ever by stating that deaths and injuries caused by guns in America have now got to a level where they are endemic enough to be classed as a public health issue. 
 
A focus on guns 
 
Republicans has always suspected that Murthy wanted to say that gun violence is a public health issue, a notion that threatened to scuttle his first nomination to the post by Democratic President Barack Obama ten years ago. 
 
Murthy became aware of Obama while Murthy was practicing as an internist in Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, when he mobilized thousands of doctors to pressure for the enactment of the Affordable Health Care Act. The political organizing also led him to his wife, Alice Chen, who appended her name to his letters from Los Angeles, where she was working as a doctor. They both communicated over text messages and call to understand their different time zone. 
 
As for social media, for instance, Murthy tweeted that guns are a ‘health care issue,’ the confirmation of this nominee was stalled, and ultimately, the United States remained without a surgeon general for over a year, even some Democrats rejecting Murthy. After the sacking, the Republican President Donald Trump immediately replaced Murthy. 
 
The same was again ratified in 2021 with Biden’s administration; all the Democrats supported Murthy along with a few Republicans. He earns a total of $191,900 in an annual basis. 
 
For most of his tenure as surgeon general, Murthy had not spoken out much on gun violence, at least not until now. 
 
He points out that the numbers changed after he became surgeon general for the second time: Firearm fatalities made America’s children identify it as the top cause of death, displacing car accidents and cancer in 2021. Says the American Academy of Pediatrics, 4,752 children died from firearm incidents in that year alone. 
 
The pile of outrageous stories that are just too unsettling not to act upon the listening tours he conducted travelling across the country contributed to what he considers to engage in, he said. 
 
There was the grandmother who told him she does not send her grandson to school wearing expensive sneakers which he knows might catch the eye of a school shooters. And the mom who, after surviving a mass shooting, always reassess the day when she decides to wear flip-flop sandals in case she had to run away from another one. 
 
“When such stories are narrated repeatedly by middle school going children , high school or college going students those are unforgettable ‘stories’ said Murthy. Looking at me it was quite inevitable to come up with the conclusion that we had to do something about it. 
 
Murthy’s report is filled with graphs that portray that gun fatalities, suicides or injuries, at the very least, are aggravating. He concludes by stating what Congress should do — with laws that prohibit the possession of large-capacity magazines for non-military use, increasing the requirement for background checks every time an individual seeks to purchase a gun, exclusion of use of such items in places that allow gatherings and punishing individuals who fail to secure their firearms. 
 
The reaction was predictable. It was applauded by the medical practitioners and democrats. Republicans jeered. The National Rifle Association criticized Murthy’s report as a war on law-abiding citizens ; Sen. Mike Braun R-Ind. , shouted that he was a “flip-flopper,” remembering that Murthy had assured him that gun violence would not be an issue of his presidency. 
 
He wanted to think that his puffed-up sixty-three-page report that lacks enforcement clout could shake things up, at least a bit. He spoke to the AP only days after Trump had been struck in the ear with a bullet, fired from a shooter at a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania. Rarely was there a chance to debate over gun measures to prevent the next shooting to stun the country. 
 
Murthy said: “My hope is that we start to look at it differently than such a polarizing and political issue and what really it is, is a public health issue that affects all of us from a man or woman living in a small community in America to a man or woman who has the ambition to … run for high office in our land. ” 
 
The surgeon general is also emphasizing a different side effect of gun violence: the psychological cost. He gives the problem a whole chapter and four pages of his 40-page report, pointing out that half of U. S. teenagers 14 to 17 are concerned about school shootings. 
 
Americans’ declining mental health 
 
This is a subject that appears to interest both parties in Congress but one on which there is little agreement about what should be done about the fact that Americans’ mental health appears to be getting worse in every aspect from the time that Murthy took office and began his second term to the time of each report. 
 
Surgeon generals of the past have not been very vocal about mental health in such a manner. 
 
Many focused on physical health: drinking alcohol and doing drugs, cigarettes and other tobacco use, breastfeeding, physical activity and bone health among others. Murthy in his reports over last three years has been actively engaging himself in explaining how social media affects our younger generation, loneliness, healthcare employees and misinformation.

Such are issues he never thought he would be dealing with after being appointed to the position over a decade ago. 
 
But Murthy sees them as issues that are putting pressure on the general health of Americans. 
 
In the core of the COVID-19 pandemic people began to prune their friends and the time they spent with the friends physically, limited to only 20 minutes daily. The state of loneliness Murthy further established in his research findings in 2023 showed that there are hazards in experiencing loneliness and that can extend to increased early mortality by 30%. 
 
When Covid-19 and break did not allow him to teach Murthy was busy as a consultant and a public speaker. He earned $2 million consulting with Netflix, Airbnb and Carnival Cruises and came out with a book ‘Together’ that was about loneliness. 
 
In that book, he tells the story about how he failed to provide himself with adequate tools to deal with ill effects of loneliness on his patients. In its stead, his reports may do so for future doctors. 
 
“The response has been overwhelming, not just from the people in the street but from the doctors and public health practitioners,” Murthy said. “And I have a theory as to why, which is that doctors are actually seeing loneliness and mental health challenges on the front lines themselves in exam rooms, in hospitals each and every day. ” 
 
Murthy does not know what he will be doing when his term is up in March. He said that there were other areas he wished to address, including mental health and loneliness. 
 
‘People are everything’ 
 
For Murthy, it is vital to get rid of loneliness, which he began contemplating in the Miami suburbs that he left last month with his wife and two young children for a few days of summer under the palm trees of the childhood home with his parents, a sister and a grandmother. 
 
This was where he avers he derived most of his knowledge concerning relationship prowess. First, through my father and mother’s example of aspirations of breaking into a new society by building Indian community in a city they were unfamiliar with when they moved here in the 70s. The two opened a weekend school with children of other Indian immigrants for them to be taught about the culture and music of the country. 
 
As he advanced in age, he assisted his mother in the front office of his dad’s family medical centre. He accompanied them to visit the patients especially patients in their homes, he moved at night to console a widow who was mourning. 
 
“They ground me from the youngest of ages that people are everything,” Murthy said of his parents, Myetraie and Hallegere. “If they had a patient who is in need, a friend who lost his job or lost someone dear to him, they would be on the phone, offering themselves to take food or come and sit in the ward and comfort him. ” 
 
When the July heat is on, his family squeezes around the kitchen to fry dosas which is the Indian thin pancake and kesari bath which is sweet raisin wheat preparation over the hot oven. His mother fills black plastic bags with food; if there are people in the house, she makes each of them take some food home. Murthy’s child of 7 years hugs the father tightly – and doesn’t want to let go – as the dishes are being served in the kitchen. 
 
That’s been the tradition of the Murthys’ for generations. 
 
In the old days for example after the homework was done the family sat down for dinner in the evening Murthy remembers. He still advises his own patients to engage in the family dinners and make them their ‘therapy’ he has even advised that phones should be set aside before meals in order to have quality time. 
 
“I always recommend to my patients that family unity and family interaction is very important particularly if the only time which you are able to be interacting is during the dinner time,” Hallegere Murthy stated.