Surgeon General talks culture of prevention in Jacksonville

On Thursday morning, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy spoke at the I’m A Star “Breakfast of Champions” at the Prime Osborn Center in Jacksonville.

Murthy, in town for the launch of Mayor Lenny Curry’s Journey of One health care initiative, packed the big room at the Prime Osborn.

Though Murthy’s confirmation was controversial, with his comments on gun control stoking the ire of munitions-friendly Republicans, his remarks Thursday on childhood obesity and health were less so.

Jacksonville has huge issues. Food deserts abound, creating generational issues with obesity and related bad health outcomes, such as diabetes, hypertension, joint pain, and other maladies that have both hard and soft costs to society at large.

I’m A Star has helped in those regards, by distributing fresh produce in food deserts and engaging the youth to take charge toward positive outcomes.

Yet there is still much work to be done.

Many honorary chairs on the host committee addressed the need for “investments that will have multigenerational impacts on our city,” as one of them, Ashley Smith-Juarez of the Clinton Global Initiative and the Duval County School Board, put it.

After a couple of hours of those speeches, Murthy spoke.

The Surgeon General noted that his family came from “humble roots,” moving to America when he was 3, to find a place “where their children would be given opportunities.”

Murthy met I’m a Star youngsters after a call to action for “walkable communities,” he said, noting that “the students of Jacksonville left a lasting impression on me”  when he met them months back, by “doing something that would help their peers.”

“This is the spirit that we need all across America,” Murthy said, as “communities are better off when we are all helping each other.”

“That’s the most important reason I’m here today,” Murthy added.

Murthy noted that “most people in America have heard of the Surgeon General, but most don’t know what the job entails.”

“Some people think I spend all day stamping cigarette boxes.”

Murthy, of course, travels the country, hearing about health concerns, such as the drug crisis, unsafe neighborhoods, and “an explosion of chronic disease like diabetes and heart disease.”

Thus, the aforementioned call to action … to forge “solutions” to these issues, such as walking.

“Just 22 minutes of brisk walking” per day “can reduce your risk of diabetes by 30 percent,” Murthy noted.

However, 3 out of 10 people in America, including many in Jacksonville, live in neighborhoods without sidewalks. Others, neighborhoods with safety concerns … especially at night, where shootings could be a factor.

Walking, Murthy said, can “rebuild a culture of physical activity in America,” a culture lost in our increasingly sedentary lives.

It can also cut stress, improve one’s mood, and build “social connections,” Murthy added, citing his own tendency toward walking meetings.

Jacksonville, Murthy said, has been “investing in this physical activity” already.

“When I think about where our country needs to move … I’ve come to believe that we need to create a culture of prevention.”

Now, however, we have a “culture of treatment.”

“We have some of the best health care facilities in the world,” Murthy added, “but we’ve all come to realize … that if we don’t pay attention to prevention, we’re going to lose out, because more and more people are getting sick.”

The end result of that: “human suffering.”

Which is avoidable, with a “culture of prevention,” including nutrition, exercise, and emotional well being.

These benefits, added Murthy, should be distributed via “health equity,” not just to people “in the right neighborhoods.”

“Health,” Murthy said, “is about opportunity. Because when people lose their health, they lose their opportunity.”

This includes children.

“Opportunity is at the center of the American Dream,” Murthy said, and “strengthening health” is key.

To do this, Murthy added, “the pursuit of health must be equated with pleasure, not pain.”

Fruits and vegetables, also, are key, and Murthy said “early exposure” to fruits and vegetables “changes preferences,” with impacts in home diets as well as those in schools.

As well, a culture of prevention is predicated on changing the environment in which we live, with accessible and affordable produce, and safe places for physical activity.

“Right now there are too many people … who don’t have access to healthy choices,” Murthy added.

Pushing back against the pushers of junk food, modeling good health in workplaces and schools are ways to do this.

City Councils, also, must invest in sidewalks and streetlights, Murthy said, calling it a “public health priority.”

These initiatives are happening in Jacksonville already, of course, via the Jax Journey.

Another step to take: to “pay attention to the mind and the spirit.”

“This is something that I realized really early on in my tenure as Surgeon General,” Murthy said, talking about the cumulative impacts of undiagnosed depression and anxiety.

The average time between onset and treatment, Murthy said, is a decade.

“More and more it’s affecting people of all ages, in all communities,” Murthy added.

“Emotional well being … is a resource within each of us that we can cultivate,” Murthy said, to “achieve our full potential.”

Programs across the country on the local level are working toward this goal, Murthy said, and their results are tangible. One such program with at risk young men in Chicago has reduced arrests by 44 percent. Another school based program in San Francisco has had similar salutary effects in “one of the most unhappiest schools in the entire district,” turning it into the “happiest school in the state of California.”

The final step to a culture of prevention – to “cultivate our ability to give and receive kindness.”

“You might think this is an unusual thing for a Surgeon General to say … but kindness isn’t just a virtue, it is a source of healing.”

“Kindness is what gives us the ability to stop judging and start helping, and we need more of that in our country,” Murthy said to applause.

Kindness from a teacher, or a coach, to a child, Murthy said, has effects that last a lifetime.

Murthy is a world removed from Surgeons General of the past. He sees how “seven out of ten people in America [have] chronic illness.” And he sees that to remedy that “collective action to make our communities stronger” is essential.

“We have to remember that … we are responsible for each other.”

Child by child. Family by family. Neighborhood by neighborhood.