Motivated by Impact: A Discussion with Dr. Atul Gawande

Behind The Knife: The Surgery Podcast

Medicine, Health & Fitness, Education, Science

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2024

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Dr. Atul Gawande joins Dr. Patrick Georgoff to share his experiences as a surgeon, writer, and global health leader. From his innovative work at Ariadne Labs and Lifebox to his current role as Assistant Administrator for Global Health at USAID, Dr. Gawande discusses the challenges and rewards of creating large-scale impact. He reflects on balancing creativity in writing with precision in surgery, lessons learned from managing teams, and the critical importance of strengthening global health systems. Enjoy!

Dr. Atul Gawande is the Assistant Administrator for Global Health at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where he oversees a bureau that manages more than $4 billion with a footprint of more than 900 staff committed to advancing equitable delivery of public health approaches around the world. The Bureau for Global Health focuses on work that improves lives everywhere--from preventing child and maternal deaths to controlling the HIV/AIDS epidemic, combating infectious diseases, and preparing for future outbreaks.

Prior to joining the Biden-Harris Administration, he was a practicing surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a professor at the Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is the founder and was the chair of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation, and of Lifebox, a nonprofit making surgery safer globally. From 2018-2020, he was also the CEO of Haven (an Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JP Morgan Chase healthcare venture). In addition, Atul was a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker magazine and has written four New York Times best-selling books: Complications, Better, The Checklist Manifesto, and Being Mortal.

Visit https://www.usaid.gov/organization/atul-gawande to learn more about our special guest. To learn more about the Global Health Bureau, please visit https://www.usaid.gov/global-health.

Please visit https://behindtheknife.org to access other high-yield surgical education podcasts, videos and more.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Behind the Night, the Surgery Podcast, relevant in medicine in government that nobody's ever heard of.
0:35.5	We don't build our system with intention to get results.
0:39.3	And that's the thing I took away from this experience in public health in USAID is we don't purposely look around and say,
0:47.3	I'm trying to reduce the percentage of deaths that occur before the age of 50 or probably in the United States, you say, before the age of 70.
0:58.6	We have priorities in our communities besides just surviving a living long.
1:01.8	And we're constantly balancing the trade-offs.
1:12.3	Hi, welcome back. We couldn't be happier to welcome Dr. Attul Gawande to Behind the Knife. Dr. Gwanda, welcome.
1:15.6	And thank you for taking the time out of your extremely busy schedule.
1:17.3	Thank you for having me up.
1:28.7	So for those of you that may have been living under Iraq, Dr. Gwanda is the assistant administrator for global health at U.S. Agency for International Development, where he oversees a bureau that manages more than $4 billion, with a footprint of more than 900 staff committed to advancing equitable
1:34.1	delivery of public health approaches around the world. And the Bureau of Global Health focuses
1:39.3	on work that improves lives everywhere from preventing child and maternal deaths to controlling the HIV and AIDS
1:46.0	epidemic to combating infectious disease and, of course, preparing for future outbreaks.
1:51.6	So prior to joining the Biden-Harris administration, Dr. Gwande was a practicing surgeon at Brigham
1:56.0	in Women's Hospital in Boston and a professor at the Harvard Medical School and the Harvard
2:00.9	T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is the founder and formerly chair of Ariadne Labs and of Lifebox,
2:08.1	which is a nonprofit making surgery safer. And from 2018 to 2020, he was CEO of Haven.
2:15.2	In addition to that, Dr. Gwani is he's a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker Magazine
2:18.7	and has written four New York Times bestselling books, complications, better, the checklist
2:24.7	manifesto and being mortal.
2:27.3	Dr. Gawande, the arc of your career has been extremely impressive from surgeon to writer
2:31.7	to entrepreneur and now a public health official at us aid you are
	...

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