The U.S. Surgeon General has only been on the job since mid-December, but already he's reaching out to communities across the country.
Among his stops, Vivek Murthy met with community, business and faith leaders in Cincinnati Tuesday to discuss the Affordable Care Act as well as local concerns such as substance abuse - particularly heroin-, mental health, and vaccination rates. Ohio, he notes, has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country.
"One of the things that I've heard everywhere I've gone," says Vivek, "is that people have a real hunger to learn what other communities are doing to deal with some of their shared challenges around obesity and chronic disease, around substance abuse, around mental illness. So that is part of what we want to do, is bring these lessons together and share them. But the other piece of this trip is building partnerships."
Vivek says he'd like to partner with many of the organizations he met with in Cincinnati "to make sure that we're doing everything we can to make the Cincinnati area healthier."
The Cincinnati visit is the twelfth stop on a nationwide 'listening tour.' From here, Murthy heads to Columbus, Toledo, and Detroit.
