Vivek Murthy

Murthy completed his internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He also led and managed medical care teams as a faculty member.[12]

He is also a founder and president of Doctors for America, a group of more than 15,000 physicians and medical students supporting high quality affordable care for all.[13][14]

In 2011, Murthy was appointed by Barack Obama to serve on the Presidential Advisory Council on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health within the Department of Health and Human Services.[15] The group advises the National Prevention Council on developing strategies and partnerships to advance the nation's health through prevention.[16]

Murthy is also the co-founder and chairman of TrialNetworks, a cloud-based Clinical Trial Optimization System for pharmaceutical and biotechnology trials that improves the quality and efficiency of clinical trials to bring new drugs to market faster and more safely.[17][18] He founded the company as Epernicus in 2008, originally, to be a collaborative networking web platform for scientists to boost research productivity.[19]

Vivek Murthy with NIH director Francis Collins in 2015

In November 2013, Murthy was nominated by President Obama for the post of United States surgeon general.[19] His nomination met resistance in the Senate by some Democrats, Republicans, and the National Rifle Association regarding previous comments Murthy made declaring gun violence as a threat to public health.[20][21][22]

Murthy's nomination received broad support from more than 100 medical and public health organizations in the U.S.[23] He received the endorsements of two former surgeons general: David Satcher and Regina Benjamin. Another former surgeon general, Richard Carmona opposed the appointment based on Murthy's age.[24][25]

On December 15, 2014, Murthy's appointment as surgeon general was approved in a 51–43 Senate vote.[26]

From the beginning of his tenure, Murthy spoke about the importance of creating a culture of prevention in America, one that is grounded in physical activity, nutrition, and emotional well-being. As part of this effort, he issued Step It Up! The Surgeon General's Call to Action to Promote Walking and Walkable Communities.[27] For the one-year anniversary of the Call to Action, he led a two-week public-private partnership with Fitbit called the Step it Up Challenge that engaged more than 600,000 people to increase their physical activity with an industry record-setting 60 billion steps. He also partnered with Elmo and Top Chef to inform the country about vaccines and healthy eating, respectively.[28][29] Murthy's 2016 surgeon general report on e-cigarette use among youths emphasized the vulnerability of young people to the products and recommended that e-cigarettes be incorporated into existing smoke-free policies to prevent youth from accessing e-cigarettes. The report drew heated response from proponents of e-cigarettes, including R Street and other public policy groups.[30]

Murthy has worked on the effects of climate change on the country's health as well,[31] and has spoken out against conversion therapy.[32][33]

On April 21, 2017, Murthy was relieved of his duties by President Donald Trump. His deputy surgeon general, Rear Admiral Sylvia Trent-Adams, was named acting surgeon general.[34]

On December 3, 2020, Politico reported that Murthy had been nominated by President-elect Joe Biden to return to the role of Surgeon General.[5] His nomination was sent to the Senate on January 20, 2021.[35]

Since 2017, Murthy has appeared on various television and radio shows talking about the problem of loneliness, and he has written numerous articles on the subject. Murthy states he was shocked by how often he encountered people suffering from severe loneliness during his medical career, and argued that loneliness in America has become prevalent enough to count as an "epidemic". Murthy sees loneliness as a root cause that plays a substantial role in many other social problems. In April 2020 he published a book about what both society and ordinary people as individuals, can do to reduce loneliness in themselves and others, entitled Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World.[36][37][38][39]