Introducing: Vic Garcia

The business of healthcare 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 pre-gentrification era, decades before Bill Clinton lived there.

Garcia's parents immigrated to America by boat from Puerto Rico and lived in a barrio because suburbs were not an option for them.

Garcia's childhood neighborhood was highly segregated with characteristic disinvestment, drugs, gangs, and murders; he remembers seeing a body on the way to All Saints Catholic school.

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

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 became 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 possible 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.

Attending West Point allowed Garcia to be competitive for admission to the University of Pennsylvania and ultimately pediatric surgery at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Dr. C. Everett Koop was an extraordinary man with courage of his convictions and a technical genius who is remembered for taking on big tobacco.

Dr. Koop taught Garcia that pediatric surgeons have a responsibility beyond the operating room to look at the health and well-being of children and saw himself as the health conscience of the country.

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.

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

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 performs poorly in premature birth rates, infant mortality, and longevity compared to other OECD countries.