Gupta has over 2 million twitter followers.
AB Wire
Indian American neurosurgeon Dr. Sanjay Gupta, 47, who is also the chief medical correspondent for CNN with several Emmys under his belt, has emerged as the second most popular doctor in the US with two million twitter followers, according to a study.
Gupta’s popularity is surpassed only by another TV personality, Drew Pinsky of HLN, who has 3.18 million followers on Twitter. Asa Andrew emerged as the third most popular doctor in the US, with 1.03 million twitter followers. Gupta at the last count had 2.03 million twitter followers.
The study, by students at Augustana University, analyzed Twitter use by doctors across the US, going back to 2006. The researchers sorted through 4,500 users as part of their research.
‘We just wanted to see how doctors are engaging with other people on Twitter,’ said one of the researchers Paige Schwitters.
The researchers found that the most followed Twitter accounts belonged to celebrities, public figures or TV personalities.
‘Gupta, a practicing neurosurgeon, plays an integral role in CNN’s reporting on health and medical news for all of CNN’s shows domestically and internationally, and contributes to CNN.com,’ according to his biography mentioned in CNN. ‘His medical training and public health policy experience distinguishes his reporting from war zones and natural disasters, as well as on a range of medical and scientific topics, including the recent Ebola outbreak, brain injury, disaster recovery, health care reform, fitness, military medicine, and HIV/AIDS,’ it added.
Gupta’s reports from Charity Hospital, New Orleans, Louisiana, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina led to him winning a 2006 Emmy Award for Outstanding Feature Story in a Regularly Scheduled Newscast. Additionally, Gupta publishes a column in Time magazine and is a special correspondent for CBS News. His books Chasing Life and Cheating Death were New York Times and national bestsellers. His latest book, Monday Mornings, a novel, was released in March 2012 and became an instant New York Times bestseller. It was adapted as a 2013 television series with David E. Kelley and Gupta serving as executive producers, according to Wikipedia.
Gupta had been considered for the position of Surgeon General by President Barack Obama, in 2009.