Language as Medicine, with Dr. Sandeep Kapoor

Dr. Sandeep Kapoor is a physician, a teacher, and healthcare innovator. As the Associate Vice President of Addiction Services for Northwell Health, he is on the frontlines of the fight against opioid addiction — at a time where substance use and abuse is on the rise. 

Dr. Kapoor has taken a different approach to this fight than many others — he’s starting with words. He trains clinicians on the power of language, how the terms we use around addiction can reinforce the shame and silence that keep people from seeking care, or can open up new conversations that destigmatize substance use. Dr. Kapoor and his team have helped clinicians broach the subject of substance use with over 1.5 million patients to date. This approach has proven so successful, Dr. Kapoor was recently awarded a major grant from the National Institute of Health to study gun violence prevention and establish and implement a first-of-its-kind protocol to universally screen among those at risk of firearm injury. 

We were also pretty excited to venture outside with Dr. Kapoor, because, in the stir craziness of Coronavirus, he and his family got a modest motorboat as a way of escaping the claustrophobia of quarantine. We got to spend the day on the water with Dr. Kapoor, traveling from Hempstead Harbor out into the Long Island sound, talking about how to approach public health issues from alcoholism to gun violence with more science, less fear, and a healthy dose of shared humanity.