Koh: That’s what we’re doing in this incredible profession through our service in public health.
So it is our job to say that we are public health professionals.
Public health is the voice of conscience in the rat race of healthcare because as the
saying goes, when you win the rat race you’re still a rat.
That public health affects every life and every day of every life.
The public health adds years to our lives and quality of life to all of our years.
That public health means transforming our current emphasis on sick care focused on treatment
often delivered late to a true public health system that delivers prevention as early as
possible.
In short, with the John’s Hopkins School of Public Health likes to say, public health
is saving lives millions at a time.
That’s what we do in public health and we are proud of service because ultimately public
health is science in the service to society and we do this in terms of service and dedicating
ourselves to building stronger communities.
There is a line in Healthy People 2010 that I absolutely love and it reads, the health
of the individual is almost inseparable from the health of the greater community.
In short the social determinants matter and we are all interdependent and we are all interconnected.
How appropriate that this meeting here isn’t in Philadelphia where over two hundred years
ago the U.S. Constitution started off with the goal of, we the people, to form a more
perfect union.
That is our goal in public health.
And I’m a Massachusetts guy so I am very partial to former President Kennedy and the
late Senator Kennedy who touched my life very personally.
President John F. Kennedy wrote almost forty five years ago, and if we cannot end now our
differences at least we can help make the world safe for diversity from the final analysis
our most common basic link is that we all inhabit this small planet.
We all breathe the same air.
We all cherish our children’s future and we are all mortal.
That’s what it’s all about.
So if we dedicate ourselves to mission and service and community, and public health,
we can work closely with the leaders and the members of the APHA in accomplishing its three
overarching priorities, rebuilding the public health infrastructure, ensuring access to
healthcare and eliminating health disparities.
The last few minutes of my presentation, let me just comment about how the new administration
is working with you to advance those 3 overarching priorities.
First, with respect to rebuilding the public health infrastructure, we have a president
and secretary that’s talking about health prevention and wellness just about every day
in the news and it is great to see isn’t it.
Thank you.
You know that one of the presidents’ first acts was to sign the Children’s Health Insurance
Program Reauthorization Act funded primarily by an increase in the federal tax on tobacco.
Thank you.
And we are very proud of that effort both with respect to the insurance coverage for
kids and for tobacco control.
We know the president and congress has put an unprecedented one billion dollars in prevention
and wellness in the ARRA Act and 650 million of that one billion into the communities putting
prevention to work that deals specifically with obesity control and tobacco control.
So we are thrilled and honored to be part of that commitment to prevention at the community
level.
And I must comment that my very first day on the job, was June 22, 2009, and on that
day I was in the Rose Garden observing as the president signed the Family Smoking Prevention
and Tobacco Control Act into law creating a new FDA Center for tobacco products that
will oversee the science based regulation of tobacco products for the first time anywhere
in the world.
Thank you.