Introducing: Vic Garcia

The business healthcare providers are in is improving the health and well-being of individuals, not just providing healthcare or doing operations.

Garcia grew up in Harlem public housing at 2190 Madison Avenue in a highly segregated neighborhood with characteristic disinvestment, drugs, gangs, and murders.

Garcia's father was a lieutenant in the New York City Police Department and at that time was the highest ranking Puerto Rican in the NYPD.

The family moved to Saint Albans, Queens, where within 5 years they were the only Black Hispanic family, and within another 5 years the neighborhood was all Black due to white flight.

Garcia attended West Point because it was the only place his father could afford to send him, as they paid cadets to attend.

Garcia had no aspirations of becoming a military officer and did not know that West Point required 5 years of active duty with potential deployment to Vietnam.

West Point and training at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia were the two experiences that made Garcia who he is, teaching him that mental and physical limitations are often only in one's mind.

In 1968, Garcia was one of five Black cadets in a West Point class of 1,013 and led a battalion of cadets.

Dr. C. Everett Koop was a technical genius with the courage of his convictions who is remembered for taking on big tobacco and pushing for early safe sex education and proper condom use during the AIDS epidemic.

Dr. Koop taught Garcia that pediatric surgeons have a responsibility not just to take care of kids in the operating room but to look at their overall health and well-being.

Dr. Koop saw himself as the health conscience of the country, asking what is beneficial for the country's health.

Healthcare providers take an oath and have a calling (not just a job or career) to improve the health and well-being of people and populations.

Despite the United States spending more than 50% of global healthcare dollars, it ranks at the bottom of OECD countries in health outcomes.

The United States ranks poorly among OECD countries in premature birth, infant mortality, and longevity.