With the world’s eyes on D.C. this week, public health got a boost from none other than President Obama himself. The high-profile acknowledgement came during this week’s Youth Inaugural Ball, which was billed as a celebration of the role young people can play to serve their communities.
As he addressed the crowd, Obama said:
“We know that young people everywhere are in the process of imagining something different then what has come before. Where there is war they imagine peace, where there is hunger they imagine people being able to feed themselves, where there is disease they imagine a public health system that works for everybody, where they imagine bigotries they imagine togetherness.”
Don’t believe me? Check it out for yourself (the quote starts at about the 3:00 mark)!
As we seek to impart the importance of public health to our nation’s health, it’s encouraging that millions of people heard our new president call for establishing an effective, comprehensive public health system – not a health care system, mind you – as a means of preventing disease!
What did you think Obama’s public health mention?
Obama gives public health a shout out
Posted on Friday, January 23, 2009