Putting prevention into practice by Colin Milner

On March 5, 2003, Vice Admiral Richard H. Carmona, M.D., outlined for an audience of doctors what he considers his top priority as Surgeon General of the United States. Seven months to the day after his swearing in as the nation’s top doc, Carmona told delegates at an American Medical Association conference that he will focus on encouraging Americans to choose healthy behaviors that may prevent disease.

According to Carmona, the U.S. health system is overburdened as the result of people’s poor health choices and lack of personal responsibility. “We wait for people to get sick and then we spend top dollar to make them healthy again,” he told AMA delegates. “As I see it, we can no longer as a society continue to afford the poor choices that have given us this huge disease burden and huge costs.”