Bill Clinton Speaks at UCF Commencement
Thursday, May 2, 2013
By: Alicia Mandigo
Former President Bill Clinton was in Orlando to deliver a commencement speech to students graduating from UCF's College of Health and Public Affairs and the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences. Clinton told students that solving domestic and global health care problems will take coorperation.
[President Bill Clinton Receives Honorary Degree from UCF]
President Bill Clinton talked about his fight against water
borne diseases killing children abroad and how childhood obesity is the number
one health threat here at home. He also talked about the high cost of health
care and how it hurts the entire nation.
“In America,
we have to figure out how to improve health care and improve health and not
have this massive gap between what we spend, right now about 17.9 percent of
GDP and what every other big rich country spends,” he said. While he applauded recent medical advancements, he warned that
technology was only part of the solution.
“Medicine in the 21st century will be a dizzying
combination of pushing the envelop in the latest scientific discovery and
constantly re-examine non-medical behaviors. How do we eat? How do we exercise,
how do we grow food? How do we process food?” he said.
Clinton told graduates that critical
health issues can’t be solved if people can’t get along and he encouraged them
to look at UCF’s own history for an example of how much can be accomplished
through partnerships and coorperation. Clinton is the second US President to speak at a UCF graduation. In 1973, President Richard Nixon gave the commencement speech to graduates at what was then known as Florida Technological University or FTU.
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