[ad_1]
Former US Surgeon General Jerome Adams has begun visiting the IU campus as the Kelley School of Business and Public Policy Chair.
He arrived with the goal of creating a partnership between business and medical professionals. He said something across the board would create a better future for Americans.
“The best thing for a strong economy is a healthy citizenry,” Adams said.
Adams, who has extensive experience in anesthesiology before serving as surgeon general and Indiana state health commissioner, continues to practice medicine today. He talked to business students about his experience at IU this week.
“I’m going to be the Rosetta Stone; I’m going to translate one into the other,” Adams said of the two fields.
Adams spent most of his time as a surgeon general during the Covid-19 pandemic, which became one of his top priorities in addition to addressing the opioid epidemic and the national mental health crisis.
Since his role as surgeon general under the Trump administration, Adams has been involved in public health. He said how long-term symptoms of covid have been experienced, especially after repeated exposure to the disease. To protect themselves and others, Adams advises people to stay up-to-date on their booster shots even if they feel safer.
“If it’s been more than a year since your last shot, you’re probably doing better,” Adams said.
During this pandemic, hundreds of people in America died not because they were unvaccinated, but because some did not get enough vaccine.
Adams said health care professionals could be better at promoting treatments for Covid-19, such as paxlovide, which can help reduce the risk of hospitalization.
Adams also discussed the importance of increasing disparities in health care to address disparities in people’s well-being based on people’s backgrounds or where they live.
“This is very personal for me, because as a child I never thought I would be a doctor, the United States Surgeon General,” Adams said. “I never met a black doctor in my life until I went to college.”
Adams emphasized that diversity in the health care industry goes beyond race. It means including people from different backgrounds. For Adams, this provides better care for patients.
“If you’re from the community your patients come from, if they speak the language your patients come from, if they know something about you, it allows you to be more empathetic to your patient,” Adams said.
Adams said he left the university renewed by the students’ optimism about the future.
“If you’re talking to adults all the time, all you hear is why you can’t do things,” Adams said. But you talk to students, you realize how much hope there is, and it gives you a positive feeling that – despite all the negative news – things are going to be okay.
[ad_2]
Source link
