Dr. Vivek Murthy

Because one of the most common complaints I would get from young people when I would travel was they would say, my parents are always on their phones and always on social media.

And I don't know how to get them off.

So this problem is a cross-generational problem.

I think perhaps the most important thing that we should remember about trust is that fundamentally it's relational.

People don't typically just build trust in faceless brands or institutions.

we tend to build trust in people or the people we associate with those institutions.

And so one thing we saw during COVID is even during the throes of COVID, when trust in institutions is declining, it's not like people didn't trust anyone, period.

They still trusted people.

Many people still trusted their doctor, they trusted the nurse, those who took care of them and their families, they trusted their friends.

If they knew somebody at their local department of public health who had helped them on an issue or come to their community to help, they trusted them.

but it came down to who do I actually know?

And I think we have to remember that in public health and medicine and use that to rebuild trust on a platform of relationships.

For example, that means to me that if we're training nurses, doctors, public health leaders for the future, part of that training has to be in how do I actually go into a community and listen and understand what people need, talk to them about what we're doing and listen to their reactions to that.

How do I build longer term relationships in a community so that I might be a department of public health, but part of my job is in bringing my information to communities directly, whether that's in church town halls or school gatherings or community town halls, or whether that's making sure that I have an open door policy and people know they can come in at any time and ask questions.

We have to figure out how to put a face forward.

to health, to public health and medicine.

And we have to empower and train and enable public health and medical practitioners to do that.

And this is not to be clear about adding one more thing to the long list of things that we ask doctors and medical and public health practitioners to do.

It's more about saying as a system, how can we support them in spending more of their time with

the people that they are seeking to serve.