New Delhi:

To help people live healthier and more fulfilled lives, Dr Vivek Hallegere Murthy, 19th and 21st Surgeon General of the United States shared a ‘parting prescription’ in which he emphasised building a community. The parting prescription addresses a “foundational-and urgent-question” that Dr Murthy has grappled with: What are the root causes of the pain and unhappiness so many are experiencing? The answer, he believes, lies in rebuilding the community.

NEW: Today, I am issuing my Parting Prescription for America: my final reflections as I complete my time as US Surgeon General. It addresses a foundational–and urgent–question I have grappled with: what are the root causes of the pain and unhappiness so many are experiencing? pic.twitter.com/9jPYI6UDex

— Dr. Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General (@Surgeon_General) January 7, 2025

In his prescription, Dr Murthy recalled how his father never felt “empty” until he left his village in India. “It was a remarkable statement from a man who grew up with no running water or electricity, and whose family scarcely had enough money to put food on the table each night. Yet what they lacked in wealth, they made up for in community,” he wrote.

From sharing food to visiting a friend who lost a loved one to simply showing up for others, Dr Murthy’s father learnt the power of community while growing and ensured he practiced it and passed it on to his two children.

“Through their care for patients over the years-which involved everything from house calls to hospital visits to late-night phone conversations when someone fell ill-they reminded us that when we find our purpose in contributing to the lives of others, life isn’t always easy, but it is immensely gratifying,” he wrote, thanking his parents for giving him the formula for fulfilment and well-being.

The three core elements of a community – relationships, service, and purpose – are a triad of fulfilment. While ‘love’ is the one core virtue, he said.

“They (core elements) can also significantly influence health outcomes, including premature mortality, heart disease, depression, and anxiety,” he added.

Together they create an ecosystem for meaning and belonging.

Dr Murthy clarified that we don’t have to be fulfilled by one single community. Most of us need a few different communities to feel whole and these communities can evolve and overlap.

“Half of young people and a third of adults struggle with loneliness; formal and informal service have remained low; and an alarmingly high number of young adults say they have low or no meaning or purpose in their lives,” he wrote on X.

To address this, Dr Murthy suggests rebuilding the community and recentering our lives around relationships, service and purpose. He also recommends rethinking what defines success and a good life and building our lives around that.

“Community is a force for health and fulfillment. It is an antidote to division and despair. We need it more than ever,” he wrote as he signed off.

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy.
| Photo Credit: AP

The U.S. Surgeon General on June 25 declared gun violence a public health crisis, driven by the fast-growing number of injuries and deaths involving firearms in the country.

The advisory issued by Dr. Vivek Murthy, the nation’s top doctor, came as the U.S. grappled with another summer weekend marked by mass shootings that left dozens of people dead or wounded.

“People want to be able to walk through their neighbourhoods and be safe,” Dr. Murthy told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

“America should be a place where all of us can go to school, go to work, go to the supermarket, go to our house of worship, without having to worry that that’s going to put our life at risk.” To drive down gun deaths, Dr. Murthy calls on the U.S. to ban automatic rifles, introduce universal background checks for purchasing guns, regulate the industry, pass laws that would restrict their use in public spaces and penalise people who fail to safely store their weapons.

None of those suggestions can be implemented nationwide without legislation passed by the Congress, which typically recoils at gun control measures. Some state legislatures, however, have enacted or may consider some of the surgeon general’s proposals.

Dr. Murthy said there is “broad agreement” that gun violence is a problem, citing a poll last year that found most Americans worry at least sometimes that a loved one might be injured by a firearm. More than 48,000 Americans died from gun injuries in 2022.

His advisory promises to be controversial and will certainly incense Republican lawmakers, most of whom opposed Dr. Murthy’s confirmation — twice — to the job over his statements on gun violence.

Dr. Murthy has published warnings about troubling health trends in American life, including social media use and loneliness. He’s stayed away from issuing a similar advisory about gun violence since his 2014 confirmation as surgeon general was stalled and nearly derailed by the firearm lobby and Republicans who opposed his past statements about firearms.

Dr. Murthy ended up promising the Senate that he did “not intend to use my office as surgeon general as a bully pulpit on gun control”. Then-President Donald Trump dismissed Dr. Murthy in 2017, but President Joe Biden nominated Dr. Murthy again to the position in 2021. At his second confirmation hearing, he told senators that declaring guns a public health crisis would not be his focus during a new term.

But he has faced mounting pressure from some doctors and Democratic advocacy groups to speak out more. A group of four former surgeon generals asked the Biden administration to produce a report on the problem in 2022.

“It is now time for us to take this issue out of the realm of politics and put it in the realm of public health, the way we did with smoking more than a half century ago,” Dr. Murthy told the AP.

A 1964 report from the surgeon general that raised awareness about the dangers of smoking is largely credited with snubbing out tobacco use and precipitating regulations on the industry.

Children and younger Americans, in particular, are suffering from gun violence, Dr. Murthy notes in his advisory called “Firearm Violence: A Public Health Crisis in America”. Suicide by gun rates have increased significantly in recent years for Americans under the age of 35. Children in the U.S. are far more likely to die from gun wounds than children in other countries, the research he gathered shows.

In addition to new regulations, Dr. Murthy calls for an increase on gun violence research and for the health system — which is likely to be more amenable to his advisory — to promote gun safety education during doctor visits.

Gen Z is facing “the equivalent of a midlife crisis” and they are becoming less happy than older generations, a global study has revealed. The World Happiness Report, which was released on Wednesday, revealed that United States is out of the top 20 happiest countries, falling to 23rd place. It also said that young people under the age of 30 now rank 62nd out of 143 countries for happiness, while US adults age 60 and above are ranked 10th. This particular statistic has caused concern among healthcare experts, with America’s top surgeon general Dr Vivek Murthy blaming social media for it.

“Allowing children to use social media is like giving them medicine that is not proven to be safe,” Dr Murthy told The Guardia. He added that the failure of governments to regulate social media was “insane”.

The doctor said that adolescents in the US were spending nearly five hours a day on social media and a third were staying up until midnight on week nights on their devices. He called for legislation “now” to reduce harms to young people from social media including limiting or eliminating features such as like buttons and infinite scrolling.

The World Happiness report is an annual barometre of well-being in 140 countries that is coordinated by Oxford University’s Wellbeing Research Centre, Gallup and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

For over a decade, it had shown that younger people were happier than their elders. But this switched in 2017 and by 2024, the US is out of the top 20 list of happiest nations.

Professor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, director of the Wellbeing Research Centre and editor of the study, said the report showed “disconcerting drops in youth happiness, especially in North America and Western Europe”.

“To think that in some parts of the world children are already experiencing the equivalent of a midlife crisis, demands immediate policy action,” he added.

British people under 30 ranked 32nd in the rankings, behind nations such as Moldova, Kosovo and even El Salvador.