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Acting Surgeon General RADM Boris D. Lushniak on Zeroing Out Tobacco Use
A year after assuming the role of Acting Surgeon General and just before delivering a plenary address at the 2014 AMSUS meeting, RADM Lushniak...
It’s been a great ride from the CDC to the FDA, and then ultimately, to the Office of the Secretary here within the Office of the Surgeon General as the Deputy and now as the Acting Surgeon General. The message is everyone should, first of all, acknowledge the fact that we have an incredible mission to undertake. The mission of the Commissioned Corps of the PHS is to protect, promote, and advance the health and safety of our nation. And I dare say although we captured that as our mission, that mission is translatable to almost every federal practitioner that is out there.
The burden of that is apparent—to protect, promote, and advance the health and safety of our nation. And yet it’s a bold and noble mission, one that is achievable. We’ve had incredible successes. We still have a lot of work ahead of us.
So first and foremost, I tell my young officers and I tell everyone who may be exposed to this conversation is the sense that do your job and do it well. That’s really the prime thing I’m asking my officers to do: Be dedicated to the mission and realize that incredible things are still achievable.
The National Prevention Strategy
RADM Lushniak. The National Prevention Council was established as part of the Affordable Care Act. So as part of that act, in addition to what we all know, are the ramifications of health care access, of insurability, of the financing of the provisions that really point out the importance of prevention in the future of health care in this country.
The goal is for us to have a healthy population at every stage of life. And so 20 federal partners...came up with a National Prevention Strategy, which is a focus of priming our nation towards prevention and wellness. It’s based on 4 strategic aims, which includes the importance of healthy and safe communities. It also entails the idea of clinical community preventive services. It talks about the empowerment of people, which is a key component of change in this nation, and the elimination of health disparities throughout the nation. It focuses on the really important preventable diseases. And among them, include the elimination of tobacco use, the importance of our really looking at alcohol and substance use in general. It’s looking at the concept of active living, the importance that we move our bodies, and the importance of healthy eating.
Office of the Surgeon General initiatives
RADM Lushniak. First and foremost, the smoking issue still continues, and there will be more on tobacco use and smoking from us. We won’t give up that fight until we’re zeroed out.
In addition, recently we released a call to action on skin cancer prevention. That’s, I think, an important issue as well because we have over 5 million people in the United States each and every year who are treated for skin cancers. We have over 60,000 people who are diagnosed with the most deadly form of skin cancer, melanoma, and 9,000 people, that’s 1 person every hour, dying of melanoma. It has an incredible impact on our country, and it is, again, one of those preventable diseases. So we look at the idea of getting the message out that we, in the Office of Surgeon General, want people to live an active lifestyle. That’s an important part of the National Prevention Strategy.
I want people to be outdoors, I want them to be runners and walkers and enjoying nature; but at the same time, I need to get the message out that we need to be wary of ultraviolet radiation from sunlight, that we can protect ourselves, seek shade when possible, put on a big hat that produces shade on your face and neck and ears. Wear glasses, put on protective clothing, and then use sunscreens, broad-spectrum sunscreens of a UV protective factor of at least 15. That’s one of the initiatives that we recently released.
In the future, where we’re priming, we’re really getting back into the fitness mode. One of the things that we’re working on, and it really simplifies, I think, what has become too complex a message—the idea of how do we have a healthy and fit nation?...
I want people to start walking 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week. Do you realize just by that simple act of walking how good our nation could do in the future? How healthy we can be as a people. So we’re really looking at an emphasis on walking and walkable communities, because not every community is walkable at this stage.