The Obama Family’s Historic Contribution to Public Health

Most assessments of the public health legacy of the Obama Administration are likely to emphasize the Affordable Care Act and increased access to care, the protection of the environment, and the effects of expanding rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community. President Obama himself points out his efforts to slow the warming of the planet. Each of these issues has been disputed, some focusing on the additional 20 million people insured or on the remaining 30 million uninsured, on the health cost containment or on the insurance premium rises, on the higher fuel efficiency standards or on the failed Clean Power Plan, on the benefits of stronger LGBTQ rights, or on the insufficient progress on gun control.

However, one theme during Obama’s two terms of office may receive less attention even though likely to get a wider approval than Obamacare, the environmental protection, or gun control: the First Family. Each First Family is privileged and unique. It would be preposterous to gauge them in a sort of contest. All occupants of the Executive Mansion are interesting in their own respects. The Obamas strike me as standing out as an example for the American people across racial, religious, sexual orientation, and class lines, not because of its three-parents-two-kids structure, but because of a particularly appealing mix: their ordinariness despite the heightened pressure of being the family of the nation's first African American president, and their reliance on universal principles accessible to the many populations comprising the Union and the world. These principles include the reliance on science when it comes to medicine, public, and environmental health; the modest separation between personal faith and political role; and an uncompromising refusal to discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or race. Barack said that his feminism involved “the idea that when everybody is equal, we are all more free” (http://bit.ly/2amaqDy). The Obama family respected this idea within their family and radiated intelligence, modesty, dignity, elegance, and sensitivity. The impact of this example in the minds and behavior of millions of the people, nationally and worldwide, is likely to have consequences ultimately measurable on a public health scale.

A BALANCED COUPLE

One of the first powerful images of the new presidential couple was Barack and Michelle marching hand-in-hand down Pennsylvania Avenue after the inauguration of the new president in January 2009. It had been “a long time coming,” Barack said in his acceptance speech (http://bit.ly/299KhNd). The couple was balanced, and had done it together.

THE WORKING MOM

Mom Michelle, born in 1964, is a modern working mother balancing marriage, motherhood, and a high-powered career, first in legal practice and then as an executive with the University of Chicago Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois. Since Malia’s birth in 1998, she relied on her own mother’s support, because “there's nothing like grandma” (http://huff.to/2eAsw8a). As First Lady, Michelle effectively promoted programs, grounded in findings of good science, to improve nutrition (including planting and maintaining a vegetable garden on the White House lawn), reduce obesity (despite heavy lobbying by the food industry), and promote early childhood education. She also left no ambiguity about her eagerness to reach the end of the interlude the White House has represented for her family.

A FEMINIST DAD

Dad Barack, born in 1961, slim and fit (6’1” and around 175 pounds or 80 kg), promoted health by establishing and defending Obamacare, but also by his personal action. He fought against his tobacco addiction (having promised Michelle in 2008 that he would quit smoking in return for her supporting his presidential bid), played basketball and golf, and showed deep affection to his wife and daughters. Obama once said about masculinity that, “As I got older, I realized that my ideas about being a tough guy or cool guy just weren’t me. They were a manifestation of my youth and insecurity. Life became a lot easier when I simply started being myself” (http://bit.ly/2amaqDy). His strong commitment to LGBTQ rights as human rights has incentivized influential celebrities—rapper Jay-Z, for instance—to endorse his contributions toward a posthomophobic era. A self-proclaimed “feminist,” Barack stressed that equal rights for women are what his daughters should “expect of all men,” regretting that “the burden [of household chores and children education] disproportionately and unfairly fell on Michelle” (http://bit.ly/2amaqDy).

THE TOLERANT TEENS

Malia and Sasha Obama were 10 and 7 years old when their father was elected President. They are 18 and 15 now, experiencing the metamorphosis every adolescent goes through, but surrounded by secret service agents and probably often fearing for the life of their parents, and possibly even their own (you may recall the “Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids,” http://bit.ly/2dId1xY). They may have dreamed, more than once, of having a normal life in Chicago, hanging out with friends, and doing what other adolescents do. Nevertheless, they dealt admirably with their unique family situation and added personal touches of sweetness and ordinariness to the First Family.

FIRST GRANDMOTHER

Marian Robinson, Michelle’s mother, with working-class roots in the south-side of a segregated Chicago, left her home at the age of 77 years to become the first Presidential in-law to live and have grandmotherly duties in the Executive Mansion for a full presidency. Being able to slip away from the White House from time to time, Marian could tell unique real-life stories. The First Grandmother contributed to keeping ordinariness and humanity in the family by being among the millions of grandmothers in the country providing childcare.

BO AND SUNNY, THE IRREVERENT SIDE

Barack and Michelle had promised dogs to Malia and Sasha as a reward for their patience during the election. It is common for a family to have dogs, but male Bo “First Dog” and female Sunny, two Portuguese water dogs, stressed the unconventional aspect of the Obama family. To wit, despite his official position, Barack promised to “clean things up a little bit” before leaving the White House in January because the dogs “have been tearing things up occasionally” (http://wapo.st/2dFH7R8). Similarly, Michelle reported that naughty Sunny sometimes “goes poop on the other end of the White House” (http://bit.ly/1MfXaLz). These irreverent dogs symbolized the ordinariness sought and demonstrated by the Obamas.

AN AFRICAN AMERICAN FAMILY…

The Obamas have also been an African American family living in the White House 50 years after the modern Civil Rights Movement began and 150 years after the constitutional end of slavery. They visited the “Door of No Return” on Goree Island, a former slave trade post off the Senegalese coast and Michelle stressed that slaves had been the labor force that built the Executive Mansion. In doing so, the Obamas brought home the message that their presence in the White House had not erased their roots.

… AND UNIVERSAL FAMILY

The Obamas made history in their eight-year tenure as the Presidential Family, by giving the world, not just the United States, an expression of the universal values of freedom, equality, and justice in a loving, balanced family, driven by reason and affection. This, I posit, has been a great and indisputable contribution to public health.