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Surgeon General Murthy emphasizes community in FMX fireside chat
Oct. 6, 2025, Matt LaMar—Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, two-time surgeon general of the United States, pursued a career in medicine after watching his father practice family medicine in their community. It was that concept—community—that Murthy repeatedly brought up in a nearly hour-long conversation with AAFP EVP and CEO Shawn Martin Oct. 6 at FMX in Anaheim, California.
One of those moments of community sticks out to this day in Murthy’s memory. He recounted when his family woke him up in the middle of the night and drove to visit the widow of a longtime patient of Murthy’s father. That woman, Ruth, had just lost her husband and her physician did not want her to grieve alone.
“I will never forget as long as I live the image of my mother in her traditional Indian sari walking up the steps of the trailer and knocking on the door, and the door opening and Ruth coming out with tears streaming down her face,” Murthy said.
“They couldn’t have come from more different worlds, but in that moment they were family. And I came to see that that's what medicine can do: It can create family, it can create community and through that it can create healing.”
Former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, talks with AAFP EVP and CEO Shawn Martin on stage at FMX.
‘People still need to trust someone’
As surgeon general under two administrations and during an international pandemic, Murthy knows firsthand about the eroding public trust in a variety of institutions. This trend, Murthy noted, began even before the pandemic. The reasons are multiple: the disinformation superhighways of social media, the failure of institutions to do their jobs, changes in technology and more.
But Murthy pointed out that just because the public may trust institutions less, that doesn’t mean they don’t crave that connection.
“This is where I think family medicine docs have a really important role to play,” Murthy said. “While people's trust is damaged, I think, in this moment within institutions, people still need to trust someone. And what they tend to do is look more locally around them, to their teachers, to their doctors, to their families members, their friends.”
Murthy suggested that family physicians proactively approach community pillars like schools and places of worship to offer expertise, answer questions and simply be there as a member of the community.
‘We need each other to keep us on the path’
Burnout is an all-too-common part of the physician experience. Murthy stressed that it has never been more important for physicians to approach their work sustainably.
“The work that you do is so important that we have to make it sustainable,” Murthy said. “And part of that means you having permission to take care of yourself in this process. Taking time to sleep does not make you weak.”
Murthy went on. “We need to tend to the four dimensions of health: our physical health, our mental health, our social health and our spiritual health,” he said. “Those four are as vital for us as they are for our patients. And again, the only way we can do this well is if we actually support each other, right? It's easier to push your friend to go home to take a break than sometimes it is to do that yourself, but then your friend can encourage you as well.”
‘Fulfillment is fundamentally about being a part of something bigger than ourselves’
In 2020, Murthy published a book titled Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World. In the book, and on stage again at FMX, Murthy discussed how the topic of loneliness kept coming up during his first stint as surgeon general in the Obama administration.
“There was a question that had been bothering me for my years in office, and that question is: ‘Why are so many of the people that I'm meeting across our country feeling this sense of emptiness inside?” Murthy said. “Why are they not feeling fulfilled?”
“Whenever I would travel and meet with young people, I would always ask them the same question, which is: ‘How do you define success?’ That's really asking them, ‘How is society defining success for you?’ And with remarkable consistency, they would tell me three things: They say money, fame and power.”
But those things aren’t what Murthy says truly brings happiness, or his preferred term, “fulfillment.” He recommends a different triad: relationships, purpose and service—all of which are grounded in community. “The community is a place where we know each other, where we help each other, where we find purpose in lifting each other up,” he said. “Fulfillment is fundamentally about being a part of something bigger than ourselves.”
‘You are the backbone of health care delivery in America’
Community can be formed with other doctors, with patients and with the broader world, and Murthy told the thousands of family medicine professionals in the Anaheim Convention Center Arena that family medicine is a vital ingredient in healthy communities because of its connection to love—the kind that drove Murthy’s parents to make the drive out to the trailer park on that night many years ago.
Toward the end of his chat, Murthy told those in the room to close their eyes, put their hands on their hearts and remember the people in their lives who believed in them and who supported them.
“What you felt in those few moments is the power of love,” Murthy said. “That is what will help us find that our way forward, what will help us heal as a country and as a world and as people who dedicated your lives to helping others and believing something.
“I know that you were all born to be healers, each and every one. And that is our mission now: to go forth and to awaken the nation and the world to our humanity, to our love and to our capacity.”
