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| Dr Vivek Murthy |
Here again comes Dr Vivek Murthy, 36, President Obama’s nominee who, if confirmed by the USA Senate, will go into record books as the youngest U.S. surgeon general. He will also oversee the National Prevention Council, a 20-member creation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA aka ObamaCare) that oversees federal health and prevention efforts.
Dr Murthy, who testified on Tuesday on Capitol Hill before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing on his
nomination, is the founder of a national physicians group that worked to pass the ACA.
He is Harvard-educated son of immigrants from India, who got a combined medical degree and a master's degree in business from Yale University.
Murthy told senators that he would avoid politics and use the surgeon general's position to focus on childhood obesity, cutting tobacco use and vaccinating children.
When cornered to explain his tweet that asserted "Obamacare gives women choice and access to contraception. What's wrong with choice?" Murthy said his approach to contraception is "informed by science," and that "when women have access to contraception, it results in better outcomes for mothers."
Murthy, whose father was a primary care doctor in Miami, is an attending physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. He founded in 2007 the software start-up Trial Networks, which is intended to help professionalize and streamline clinical trials. He is also founder of the non-profit VISIONS Worldwide that works to provide AIDS and HIV education in India.