Regina Benjamin Continues Crusade for Wellness

A Q&A with the former Surgeon General on her new position, the importance of early health habits, and why New Orleans is a natural laboratory for wellness.

After serving almost four years as U.S. Surgeon General, Regina Benjamin, MD, resigned the position in July and was named the first Endowed Chair in Public Health Sciences at Xavier University in New Orleans.

For Benjamin, the new role is a return to her alma mater and an opportunity to continue her work promoting public health and the power of prevention. A long-time champion of physical activity, smoking cessation, and healthful eating, Benjamin chaired the National Prevention Council during her tenure as Surgeon General and says she intends to keep advocating wellness while at Xavier.

She spoke recently with HealthLeaders Media about her plans to use her new position to broaden her mission and about what she sees as the best way to confront the challenges facing the nation's healthcare system.

HealthLeaders Media: What will be your first priority in your new role?

Benjamin: At Xavier, I am beginning to develop the department of public health. I'll be working with the faculty and staff on promoting Xavier in becoming an international center in public health. It's one of the only schools with a bachelor's degree in public health because most schools only offer it as a master's degree. With my focus being on prevention, I want to get these students involved in their communities early on in their careers.

HealthLeaders: Have you set other immediate goals for yourself?

Benjamin: Another one of my first priorities will be promoting tobacco-free campuses. … Every day, over 1,200 people die in this country from smoking cigarettes, and each person who dies is replaced by two young smokers. If we could just get our young people not to take that first smoke before the age of 26, our next generation could be smoke-free. Tobacco companies know this so they market to that younger group, spending over $1 million an hour. We want to teach young people not to be lured in by the glamour of it.

HealthLeaders: You are on a mission to promote wellness and prevention. How do you think we can best move from a healthcare industry that is focused on treating illness to one that is dedicated to helping people stay well?

Benjamin: When I had the opportunity to chair the National Prevention Council, we were able to create a National Prevention Strategy to move the nation from being based on treating illness to being based on prevention. I left that position, but I didn't leave the mission. Being at Xavier will allow me to continue that mission. One way to do it is to involve the community, involve everyone.

Healthcare doesn't just occur in our doctors' offices and our hospitals. It occurs in everything we do. It occurs where we live, where we work, where we play, and where we pray. That is where public health comes in. … I don't want to tell people what to do, but I want to encourage them to want to be healthy. If we want people to walk, we need to give them safe places to walk and make their neighborhoods walkable. If we want them to eat well, we have to make sure there are places to purchase healthy foods.

HealthLeaders: How do we get started?

Benjamin: It begins in the community, at the grassroots level, and will move us to being a healthier, fitter nation. This movement has to start from the ground up. We need to have a groundswell, like with the Civil Rights movement. It has to start at the community level with people who can be out there and have an opportunity to make a difference.

HealthLeaders: Do you feel optimistic about the prospects of creating a fitter nation?

Benjamin: I really do. I am pretty excited about it and very optimistic. One of the things we have in this country is wonderful technology, and our healthcare system—including our doctors and nurses—is among the best in the world. Now we have to get over the hump, and that means keeping people from getting sick in the first place. New Orleans and Xavier, in particular, allow us to have a kind of natural laboratory.

The city of New Orleans has gone through so many challenges with hurricanes, oil spills, and high populations of uninsured. It allows our students to get training that can have a global impact and to show how we have bounced back and that if something else happens, we'll be prepared to bounce back again. I think other cities and states and nations can learn from that. If New Orleans can do it, people can do it everywhere.

HealthLeaders: How do we, as a country, balance the challenges of lowering the overall cost of care while assuring access to care for all who need it?

Benjamin: That is the big challenge that we have as a country. I don't like to put a value on a person's life because I think there is no dollar sign you can put on someone's health or their life. But the reality is we have to keep costs under control in order to have healthcare and for people to have access to it. I do think prevention offers the best opportunity, particularly prevention of chronic disease.

If we start to do things that are listed in our National Prevention Strategy like increasing exercise, eating healthier, decreasing smoking, and decreasing excessive alcohol use, those four things can really change the health outcomes of a community. If we focus on those behavioral changes, we can really change the curve. Common sense tells you that if you prevent people from getting sick, it's much cheaper, so prevention offers the best opportunity to improve our healthcare system as well as keep costs down.