MIAMI — The dated gold and silver trophies that are in the display cabinet of Dr. Vivek Murthy’s The Surgeon General’s many talents can still be admired in the family home, from dance performances to math competitions.
Murthy grew up in a Florida suburb and his family thought he could do almost anything.
But when a high school world history teacher suggested that he might one day make a good foreign minister, his mother stepped in.
“She was really worried,” Murthy said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press last month, as his mother giggled at his retelling of the story. “She called my father. She said, ‘You should come home and talk to him because he’s thinking of entering politics.’”
Now, in his second term as the “Nation’s Doctor,” Murthy has not run away from politics, as his mother had hoped. He has gone for it.
He took it upon himself powerful technology companiesand accused their addictive algorithms and dangerous content of negatively impacting children’s mental health. Earlier this year, he went so far as to ask Congress to warning from the surgeon general label on social media, on platforms like Instagram or TikTok. In June, Murthy released his most politically charged report yet, stating that deaths and injuries caused by firearms reached such a critical mass in America that a public health crisis emerged.
Republicans have long feared that Murthy was planning to declare gun violence a public health crisis, speculation that nearly derailed his first nomination 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 led 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 reactions on social media Describing gun control as a “health care issue” delayed 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 promptly fired Murthy.
Murthy was reconfirmed under the Biden administration in 2021, with support from 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 changed after he became Surgeon General for the second time: Gun violence became the leading cause of death among American children, surpassing car accidents and cancer in 2021. More than 4,752 children died from gun violence According to a study by the American Academy of Pediatrics, children suffered more injuries that year.
The stories he heard on listening tours around the country were devastating to ignore, and they helped shape the issues he wants to speak out about, he said.
There was the grandmother who told him she didn’t send her grandson to school in light-up sneakers, in case they attracted the attention of a school shooter. And the mother who, after surviving a mass shooting, always reconsidered leaving the house in flip-flops, in case she had to flee again.
“When you hear these stories over and over again from middle schoolers, high schoolers and college students, those stories stick with you,” Murthy said. “It was imperative to me that we had to do something about this.”
Murthy’s report is filled with statistics showing that gun deaths, suicides and injuries are on the rise. He concludes by saying that Congress must take action — with laws banning high-capacity magazines for civilian use, requiring universal background checks for gun purchases, restricting their use in public places and punishing people who don’t store their weapons safely.
The reaction was predictable. Doctors and Democrats praised it. Republicans derided it. 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 had told him gun violence would not be a focus of his term.
Murthy believes his toothless report might shift the conversation a bit. He sat down with the AP just four days after Trump was hit in the ear by a bullet from a would-be assassin at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. There was little incentive to take action on guns after the latest shooting that shocked the nation.
“I hope that we can 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 people in small communities in America to people running for high office in our country,” Murthy said.
The Surgeon General also highlights another side effect of gun violence: the toll on mental health. He devotes an entire chapter and four pages of his 40-page report to the problem, noting that half of American teens ages 14 to 17 worry about school shootings.
The decline in Americans’ mental health, a topic of apparent bipartisan interest in Congress but with little consensus on how to address it, was a theme in nearly every report released during Murthy’s second term.
Rarely have former health ministers spoken out so extensively on mental health.
Many focused on physical health: alcohol and drug abuse, smoking, breastfeeding, exercise and bone health, for example. Murthy’s reports over the past three years have explored the impact of social media on young people, loneliness, healthcare worker burnout and misinformation.
These are things he had not anticipated when he was first appointed more than ten years ago.
But Murthy sees them as problems that are putting pressure on the overall health of Americans.
Loneliness skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic, as people thinned out their friendship groups and reduced the time they spent with those friends in person to an all-time low of just 20 minutes a day. The State of Loneliness, Murthy concluded in his 2023 findingscan increase the risk of premature death by 30%.
Murthy spent his time during the pandemic and between terms consulting and giving speeches. He made $2 million working with companies including Netflix, Airbnb and Carnival Cruises, and wrote a book, “Together,” focused on loneliness.
In that book, he tells how he felt unprepared to deal with the impact of loneliness on the health and happiness of his patients. His reports may change that for future doctors.
“The response has been overwhelmingly positive, not just from the public, but from the medical and public health community,” Murthy said. “And I have a theory about why, which is that physicians themselves are seeing loneliness and mental health issues on the front lines, in consulting rooms and hospitals, every single day.”
After his term ends in March, Murthy doesn’t know what the next step will be. But he said he still wants to focus on mental health and loneliness.
Murthy says his interest in eradicating loneliness dates back to the suburbs of Miami, where he retreated last month with his wife and two young children to spend a few summer days beneath the palm trees of his childhood home, along with his parents, sister and grandmother.
It was here, he said, that he learned the most about the power of relationships. First, by watching his parents, immigrants from India, work hard to create a community of their own in a city 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 of his father’s family 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. “When they had a patient who needed help, a friend who lost their job or a loved one who lost theirs, they were always there, whether by phone or in person, bringing food or just sitting by the bedside and holding their hand.”
Even in the July humidity and heat, his family gathers in the kitchen to bake dosas, an Indian crepe, and kesari bath, a sweet raisin-and-wheat mixture, over a hot oven. His mother stuffs plastic bags full of food and insists that visitors to the house bring one. Murthy’s 7-year-old son wraps himself around his father—and won’t let go—as dinner is served in the kitchen.
It is an old tradition for the Murthys.
Decades ago, after homework was done, the family would eat dinner together every night, Hallegere Murthy said. He still tells his own patients to view family dinners as a “therapy session” and recommends putting away cellphones while they chat at the dinner table.
“I always tell my patients that family unity and family interaction is very important, especially if the only time you all get to interact is at dinner,” Hallegere Murthy said.