Rethinking health priorities: A conversation with Vivek Murthy
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
McKinsey on Healthcare, a podcast series about visionaries, leaders, and problem solvers shaping the future of healthcare.
I'm Pooja Kumar, a partner in McKinsey's Boston office. Today, I'm joined by Vivek Murthy, who served as the 19th Surgeon General of the United States. As America's doctor, he created initiatives to tackle our country's most urgent public health issues, including the Ebola and Zika viruses, obesity, mental illness, and tobacco-related disease. He also worked on the Flint water crisis and the opioid crisis.
What inspired Vivek Murthy to pursue a career in public health?
Vivek is also the author of a new book, Together, the Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World. It's great to have a chance to talk to you about the public health perspective on the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thanks, Pooja.
Vivek, let's start from the beginning. Tell us a little bit about how you got involved in public health and how you found your path leading the nation's efforts to address a broad range of public health concerns.
Well, thank you, Pooja. And it's really nice to be here with you and with the entire community online that's joining. My path to public health was accidental, as many other things have been in my life. I was never one who made five and ten year plans because when I did try, they would quickly fall apart. And when I was a freshman in college, I actually got a call from my father. And he said, there's this philanthropist in Florida who wants to give money to a worthy cause, but he doesn't know what cause to give it to. Do you have any ideas? And what he meant was, do you want to do something? Do you want to build a project? And I had not thought of that at all. I was starting college. But that got me thinking.
This was in the mid-90s when HIV was on the rise in India. And so my sister and I together decided to build an effort to train young people, students, to go to India to empower really the students there. through community education programs. So we spent our first summer after a freshman year doing these education workshops. And we spent the next eight years building out this effort.
How did loneliness become a significant public health issue?
Along the way, we built a community health worker program in a series of small villages in South India. And this became our introduction to public health. And what I realized then is that I really enjoyed the experience of bringing people together around a vision for how to improve health at scale. And that's what began my journey in public health, which took me to building more nonprofits ultimately led me to building a technology company focused on improving research and collaboration on clinical trials. But what tied all of those efforts together was really this common desire to bring people together around ideas that can improve health at scale.
Now, you've had a very accomplished career, including several of the experiences you just mentioned. But let's also not forget that you're only 42. What was it like being the first Surgeon General of Indian descent and the youngest active duty flag officer in the Federal Uniform Service?
Well, it was interesting. I didn't feel young because I felt that what I was bringing with me were a set of experiences and perspectives that I hoped would be helpful. But the other thing is I had to get used to working with people who were in different stations of life. So when I was 17 years old and my sister and I were building this nonprofit organization, I had to work with principals of schools and superintendents and philanthropists who are 30, 40 years older than I was. And so the issue of being in different ages was less of an issue for me. But what I found and what I was really excited to encounter in government was that they were people of all ages and stages who were extraordinarily talented and who were doing amazing work.
What are the impacts of COVID-19 on mental health and loneliness?
We were there because of our ideas and our willingness to work hard and our creativity. And the last thing I'll say about that, which I found to be interesting during confirmation, is senators rightly asked, do I have enough experience to do this job? It's a question they should ask everybody for any major post in government.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:07–0:40
2
What inspired Vivek Murthy to pursue a career in public health?
0:40–2:08
3
How did loneliness become a significant public health issue?
2:08–3:46
4
What are the impacts of COVID-19 on mental health and loneliness?
3:46–5:35
5
How can individuals maintain connections during physical distancing?
5:35–7:53
6
What challenges do frontline workers face during the pandemic?
7:53–9:19
7
How can the government better support frontline healthcare workers?
9:19–15:28
8
What role do private entities play in public health responses?
15:28–32:53
Speakers
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