Thursday, March 05, 2009

Atul Gawande for Surgeon General, Health Czar, some kind of key leadership role in the establishment of universal access to health care....

Atul Gawande, MD is a surgeon, an experienced hand in presidential policy making and program implementation, a New Yorker magazine staff writer, an utterly engaging public speaker, persuasive as all get-out, a pragmatist, on and on.



He looks like he could have got his start in Bollywood, though he's a native of Athens, Ohio.

I don't know whether he's been approached about a health administration position in the Obama government. If not, he should be, particularly since Sanjay Gupta is rumored to be backing away from a possible appointment to the position of Surgeon General.

Here's his website, starting with the biography page. Next thing to click is articles.

I recommend his most recent New Yorker article, then the ones on "Checklists" and "Piecework".

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hear, hear.

He actually has direct experience in crafting national health care policy, from his stint on the Clinton task force. He's a better, more sophisticated communicator than Gupta. And I believe that his work on checklists, which is still underway, will eventually win a Nobel for Medicine. Or, at least, that it should. In championing the idea, pioneering its application, and serving as its most prominent proselytizer and director of the international group spreading and studying its use, Gawande has likely saved more lives than all but a handful of medical innovators.

In short, he's perfect for the job.

Anonymous said...

Yes! I completely agree. I think this every couple of months or so whenever his articles in the NYer come out, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one.

Kyle said...

has there been any further development on Gawande as surgeon general of USA? Has he been asked to do the job?

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Of the biblical allotment of three score and ten I have lived only three of them more than a bicycle ride from one of the Great Lakes. I grew up ten blocks from Lake Erie in the (once Irish/Italian ghetto, now newly-hip) "Near West Side" of Cleveland. I can still cycle to the Milwaukee lakefront in an hour and a half; but, a round-trip has always been more than I would (noror ever did) attempt. -0- I'm a "...somewhat combative pacifist and fairly cooperative anarchist," after the example of Grace Paley (1922-2007). -0- I'm always cheerful when I pay my taxes (having refused--when necessary--to pay that portion of them dedicated to war). -0- And I always, always vote.