When you visit the doctor they'll likely check your heart rate, measure your blood pressure, take your temperature. But if you're the

doctor charged with assessing the health of the country, that's a daunting task. Being healthy

in America these days looks a little different than it did in years gone by. So how do you check the

country's bill of health and decide what issues need to be addressed? That's a question for the

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, also known as the nation's doctor.

Murthy has set a few priorities for this term.

They include addressing loneliness, youth mental health, and health

disinformation.

Last week he announced gun violence is a public health crisis. and health

information.

Last week he announced gun violence as a public health crisis.

It is a public health issue that merits a public health approach and we've

taken public health approaches to challenges like tobacco,

our accident-related debts over the years and we've been able

to reduce the toll of those public health challenges.

We can do the same thing here with gun violence and it's urgent that we do so.

After the break we sit down with the U.S. Surgeon General to talk about how he's tackling

the job this time around.

I'm Jen White, you're listening to the 1A podcast where we get to the heart of the story.

We'll be back with more in just a moment.

Joining us now is the nation's doctor, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy.

Dr. Murthy, thanks for being here.

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