Before the presentation, investigators at UK filled the atrium at the Healthy Kentucky Research Building to walk visitors through their research.
Afterward, an enthusiastic Dr. Monica Bertagnolli — the first surgeon and only second woman to lead the agency — offered a crash course in the inner workings of NIH, how she wants to get local healthcare more involved in national research, and, as a leading medical official, what keeps her up at night.
RIGHT NOW: NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli — the first surgeon and second woman to hold the position — is speaking at UK this morning. pic.twitter.com/xQdapULEJT
— Josh James (@JoshJamesWUKY) June 10, 2024
One troubling area she touched on was the US’s overall declining health and life expectancy. Take this sobering comparison.
"Our life expectancy is poor compared to our peer nations. There are many wealthy nations here with much better life expectancy than we have and some that aren't," she reported. "Our life expectancy actually here is about equal to that of Vietnam."
A big driver, she said, is more younger people dying of the so-called “diseases of despair” – drug and alcohol abuse, suicide, among other causes.
While the U.S. has regained some footing after the height of COVID, Bertagnolli said the country hasn’t fully bounced back and long COVID remains a problem. As for future pandemics...
"We're better prepared, but we're not at all complacent about how awful pandemics are and the great suffering that comes from this, and the need to be constantly ready to spring into action," she told WUKY.
And when it comes to “springing into action,” Bertagnolli said COVID served as a wake-up call.
"We really hadn't before had a good real time feedback link with really snappy real time data," she added.
That data – both its reliability and collection – was one of the themes of Bertagnolli’s talk at UK. She said the pandemic showed medical officials the necessity of creating a more responsive data ecosystem running all of the time, not just during major health emergencies.
Speaking with reporters, the NIH director was also asked about efforts to combat distrust toward medical authorities in general. Part of the solution, she said, lies in delivering tangible results for patients. She pointed to recent polling from Pew about who people trust the most when it comes to medical information.
"The very highest trust was with their primary care providers, which is why we're launching this new primary care research network, because we want to put the research into the hands of people who are trusted, so that everybody can have the benefit," the director explained.
It’s one of the strategies Bertagnolli has adopted since taking over the top NIH spot last November.
