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00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to iHeartRadio Communities, a public affairs special focusing on the biggest issues impacting you this week. Here's Matty Munoz. I am Manny Munoz. Thank you for tuning in to iHeartRadio's Communities. It is our weekly public affairs show where we try to bring you conversations that will help you better understand important issues or maybe just some interesting topics. Either way, I do hope you'll stick around for the next half hour. And if you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, please feel free to reach out on Instagram. My handle is at iodmanny.com. That's at I-O-D-M-A-N-N-Y. Now, let's get on with the show. You might know him as Dr. McDreamy. For me, he'll always be Ronald Miller from Can't Buy Me Love. Patrick Dempsey has spent years on TV saving lives, but in real life, his own mother's battle with cancer inspired a much more personal mission, and now he's taking on one of America's deadliest cancers. Patrick Dempsey joins us right now. Patrick, I appreciate the time.
00:01:06
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for having me on your show.
00:01:08
Speaker 1: Tell me about your mother's battle with cancer and how that changed your approach in life.
00:01:15
Speaker 2: Yes, I think any time a family member gets the diagnosis of a positive cancer outcome, it's devastating. Mine came in the late 90s. My mother wasn't feeling well. I had gone home to visit her. She was always very healthy, very active. And the following day, she announced that she had ovarian cancer. She had the tumors, the size of a grapefruit and had to have it removed immediately. Unfortunately, before the surgery could take place, the tumor burst and she had to do an emergency surgery, which compounded the issue. And then over the next 13, well, she passed away in 2014. So she had over 12 reoccurrences. It seemed like it would come back every two years. So it was a very challenging period. Um, And my mom fought it valiantly and she never gave up and she stayed very positive. And, you know, it was a profound impact on our family and navigating those years with it coming back. And out of that, we realized that there was no real support services around people who've been impacted by cancer. There's plenty of research going into drugs and medication and surgeries and doctors. But what happens after that? What about the wraparound care, which is sort of, you know, therapy, counseling, acupuncture, Reiki, support groups, counseling, nutrition, movement, mindfulness, whatever that individual, the caregiver, those family members who've been impacted, whatever they need, we try to fill that gap and help support them in any way possible so that they have their own agency.
00:02:55
Speaker 1: In my experience, places that treat cancer have specific focuses. It seems like the Dempsey Center has a broader scope in how they hope to treat the person inside and out.
00:03:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's correct.
00:03:11
Speaker 2: We treat every type of cancer. We're not specializing in anything, but we specialize in what that individual in that family needs and how to make their life better. And that can be many different things. You just have to sit and listen, and they'll tell you what they need, and then we provide those services to them at no cost.
00:03:33
Speaker 1: You've obviously been involved in cancer advocacy for years. We talked about why. What made you want to focus specifically on colorectal cancer with the Reckoning campaign?
00:03:44
Speaker 2: Well, I think we want to focus on all aspects of cancer. And the most important thing across the board is getting your screenings and understanding your family history. If you have a family history of cancer, and certainly colon cancer is one of the biggest killers that we know of, and if early detection, you can survive it. So it's just getting people to understand that we need to get in now younger. We need to get in in our 40s. A lot of the things that are contributing to that is what we eat, lack of movement, lack of proper exercise. But if you can get in and get your screening, look, the gold standard at is a colonoscopy, but it's a big procedure to do and it's very hard to do. So now there's an opportunity to do the shield, which is a blood test. So you can ask your doctor about this. It's FDA approved. It's less evasive. Of course, the gold standard is a colonoscopy, but it just sort of gets the barrier down a little bit lower so it's easier to get in and to confront that. And I know for me, I don't know if it is this way for you, it's always anxiety-ridden process When you go in to get your physical, because your mind goes crazy with what if, you know, what if this happens? And you feel much better when you come out, you hear from your doctor and you get a clean slate. Or if you don't, something comes up and you need to do a follow up. At least you're ahead of the game. And that's the key here. That's why I'm talking about colorectal cancer and getting in there and getting your screenings done and certainly working with the Shield and Garnet in the services that they provide.
00:05:12
Speaker 1: A couple more minutes here with Patrick Dempsey, the world-famous actor, obviously, talking about the reckoning campaign and what led him to lead to found the Dempsey Center. You mentioned colorectal cancer. It is now the leading cause. cancer death among Americans under the age of 50. And you were talking about how, I guess, kind of stressful a visit to the doctor could be because people are worried about what they might hear. Doing this long enough to know that early detection is the key to surviving so many of these things. And as you mentioned, for colorectal cancer, early detection is really, really easy in this day and age.
00:05:55
Speaker 2: That is true. I mean, if it's caught early enough, this is why it's important to go in and do your screenings and just getting a physical, right? Talk to your doctor. Make sure that they understand
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what's going on with your family history. I can't say that enough. It makes a big difference because it is treatable, and the survival rate is that much greater if you get ahead of it.
00:06:18
Speaker 1: How did going through what you saw your mom go through kind of change your perspective in wanting to make sure that people just did the simple things like yearly screenings?
00:06:31
Speaker 2: Well, I just think had my mom done her screenings earlier, she could be alive today. And it's one of those things that, you know, it was a very devastating news. And to see my mother go through the countless screenings battles, you know, of these reoccurrences year after year. It just, you wanted to be able to do something positive. And I had the visibility and people were projecting onto me being a doctor anyway. So what could I do to be positive, to give back and to bring awareness to the cancer community and do something positive based on our experience as a family?
00:07:07
Speaker 1: You're obviously a very recognizable face. How much do you think your celebrity has actually helped change people's behavior when it comes to realizing how important this is for their health?
00:07:20
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's hard to quantify that. I think it's just a question of using the platform and getting the word out there and letting people know that there are these tools available to make your life much better and healthier. And I think that's a positive thing. I think fame in itself is really quite empty, but if you can use it for a positive cause like this and to bring awareness, I hope I'm reaching a number of people. I know in the state of Maine that we're reaching a number of people and we're supporting them through their cancer journey, not only the patient, but the loved ones and children and our children's program to support them as well. So it's really, we're making an impact and we want to make a bigger impact, not only in the state of Maine, but around the world and around the country.
00:08:03
Speaker 1: I mentioned for me, he'll always be Ronald Miller in Can't Buy Me Love. You laughed when I first introduced you. Why is that?
00:08:12
Speaker 2: I think it's great. I mean, that was my first round of success as a a young actor many years ago, and I can always tell the generation who knows that movie. And it always makes me laugh and makes me smile and makes me connect with the fan or whoever brings it up to me because it was a very special movie for me, and I'm glad people still enjoy it 30 years later.
00:08:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, how could it not? It was such a big part of my generation. The year I graduated... from high school, you're just a couple of years older than I am, which leads me to this. I think it is quite often men who try to avoid going to the doctor for the reasons that you said a little bit earlier. And the older we get, the more important it is that we get those yearly screenings, not just for colorectal cancer, but for
everything.
00:09:01
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
00:09:01
Speaker 2: Like I have a family history of cholesterol as well, right? So I'm going in to check that. I'm going in to check, you know, do I have any cancer? I know it's in my family with my mother. And then also, what am I doing as far as my diet is concerned? Am I eating healthy? Am I at the right weight level? You know, I've changed my diet. I changed, you know, I don't drink. I'm very careful what I eat. And it's important to just have that peace of mind going in and knowing that you're healthy because I have children and I want to be around them. with them as long as possible. And if I can control what I'm doing and use my doctor and the tools that they have to stay healthy and to stay active and lucid, that's an important thing. It's hard because I think it's very scary, the unknown. And I found that sometimes the night before I have a physical, I can't get to sleep because I'm scared. you know, and a lot of us, it's very easy to go into denial about it. It's not going to happen to me, but I'd rather be ahead of it and try to go through that anxiety and that pain and fear so that the following afternoon when I come out, at least I've done that. I can check the box and hopefully, you the results are, you know, positive and not a negative.
00:10:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, no question about it. There's one thing to live a long life. There's quite another thing to live a long life with a good quality of life. And as we talked about a moment ago, early detection is the key. The Reckoning Campaign, last thing for you. Pretty powerful title. What is the message behind it?
00:10:38
Speaker 2: Is really get in there. It's a way to lower the barriers so that people can get in, talk to your doctor, about it. Talk to the doctor about the shield, this blood test, get that done.
00:10:49
Speaker 3: It's easy to do.
00:10:50
Speaker 2: You're done in five minutes. And if anything comes up out of that, then you consult your doctor and go to the next step. But at least it's a way to take the anxiety away. And it's a good way. It's FDA approved. And it's something you should talk to your doctor about.
00:11:04
Speaker 1: Patrick Dempsey, sincerely, Appreciate it for the time, everything you're doing to try and bring attention to this. And quite frankly, between us, a lifetime worth of entertainment with all of your work. Thank you so much. Best of luck.
00:11:19
Speaker 2: I appreciate that. And thank you so much for having me on the show to talk about this. Really grateful.
00:11:24
Speaker 1: You're listening to iHeartRadio Communities, our weekly public affairs show. I am Manny Munoz. If you have any thoughts, comments, or questions, please feel free to reach out to me on Instagram. My handle is at IODManny. That's at I-O-D-M-A-N-N-Y. Finding mental health help can be difficult even when you know that you need it. Figuring out where to start, who to trust, and what you can afford can be a barrier all by itself.
Project Healthy Minds is trying to change that, and its founder and CEO, Philip Shermer, joins us to talk about it. Philip, I appreciate the time. Thanks for joining us.
00:12:02
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
00:12:03
Speaker 1: For someone who's never heard of Project Healthy Minds, explain exactly what it is and how it came about.
00:12:10
Speaker 3: OpenTable is for booking restaurant reservations, or Expedia is for booking a flight for a hotel. This Project Healthy Minds is for finding mental health services, whether you need a therapist, a psychiatrist, a support group, an eating disorder service, a substance use service, a crisis hotline, regardless of whether you want in-person care or you want something virtual. The whole vision behind it was a front door on the internet for finding mental health services and And it's set up as a 501c3 not-for-profit so that that service, that platform, can be free for the public. Because I think that in 2026 in America, it should be as easy to find mental health services as it is to book a flight, a hotel, or a car rental.
00:13:06
Speaker 1: You obviously saw something missing. You saw a problem here and aimed to fix it. What was the problem that you saw? Was it access? Was it information?
00:13:18
Speaker 3: Well, why don't I tell you how this all began? So this began over a coffee conversation six and a half years ago with two friends of mine who manage a bunch of well-known musicians. And they told me a story over breakfast that totally changed my life and led to the inspiration for Project Healthy Minds, which was this. The artist that they, the musician that they became well-known for is a hip hop artist by the name of Logic who released the song in April of 2017. The title of the song is the phone number of the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. The 1-800 number was now 988, but forever. And at the time was the 1-800 number. And the song was about, was inspired by Logic's own mental health journey and And he thought that song would be personally meaningful, but he wasn't sure if it would be commercially successful. Well, lo and behold, that song went seven times platinum. It was nominated for two Grammys, Song of the Year and Music Video of the Year. But perhaps more important than all of that, the day the song was released, the Suicide Hotline saw the second highest call volume in its history behind the death of Robin Williams. A few months later, he performs that song at the VMAs. There's a 50% spike. in call volume to the Suicide Hotline. A few months after that, he performs the song as the closing set at the 2018 Grammys. There's a 300% spike in call volume. And then when we hit the one-year mark of the song release, April of 2018, the Hotline published a report showing that call volume was up 30% year-over-year since the day the song had been released. So you asked me, how did this all begin? It all began over a coffee where I basically... heard the story of a hip-hop star whose own vulnerability in his song was inspiring Americans from every community to reach out and ask for help because they were inspired by a role model they looked up to.
00:15:14
Speaker 1: Wow, that's amazing. And I guess part of what he accomplished with that song and the response every time he performed it was kind of breaking down the stigma, right? Because there's still a stigma not only surrounding mental health issues to begin with, but asking for help.
00:15:36
Speaker 3: Exactly. What you've got in this country is there are 65 million Americans living with a mental health condition. 60% of those people, six in 10, will never get any form of care in their lifetime. And for the 40% who are lucky enough to get care, it takes on average 11 years between symptom onset and when people get help for the first time, which is almost never the last time they get help. And so we were looking at this enormous mental health crisis. And the thing that really stuck out to me was the most likely outcome for you is that you just never get any form of care. But if you are lucky enough to get care, it takes more than a decade to get care for the first time. And so when you study, well, why is that the case? Why do so many people never get care? Or why does it take so long? What all the literature shows is the first two barriers that people face are one, stigma. When people feel a sense of shame about a topic, they're avoidant and they put off seeking help, even if they know They should have a therapist or even if they know they should try a support group or even if they know they need some type of mental health care. It's just something that if you don't feel great about it, you put it off, you delay it. You say, I don't have time for it right now. I'll deal with it later.
00:16:54
Speaker 2: But then the second.
00:16:55
Speaker 3: Barrier is when people finally gin up the resolve to go find support, the process of finding the right mental health services in America, the right that are right for you, that you can afford, that are on your schedule is it is like impossible, right? It's impossible if you are well-educated and if you're well-networked. But if you're not those things, which are what most people are, it is a hundred times harder. It feels impossible to find the right care for you. And I just believe that the benefit of technology and the internet should not only be about creating big businesses that make lots of money, It should also be how do we harness technology to improve the lives of everyday people.
00:17:42
Speaker 1: Speaking with Philip Shermer, he is the founder and CEO of Project Healthy Minds. The website is projecthealthyminds.com. So one of our listeners is sitting at home in the car, what have you. They understand that they need help, whatever that help might be. Walk me through what happens. They go to the website projecthealthyminds.com and what?
00:18:11
Speaker 3: And they have two paths. If they already know the type of mental
health care that they want, they know they want a therapist, they know they need a psychiatrist, they want to try medication, they know they need a support group, they can just click directly into a set of options. They can comparison shop between those options to find what they need. Or if they're not sure, because there's a lot of Americans who aren't sure what kind of mental health support, they don't even know what the options are. And they don't know based on how they're feeling, what they should be using, right? They don't know, do I need a therapist or is this something that I should just try meditation or should I be in the support group? So you go to the website and there's a questionnaire. You answer a set of questions. It takes less than 60 seconds. And based on your answers, we'll show you a set of mental health services that are tailored to you. And you can still comparison shop, but the idea is we want to make it as easy as possible, as fast as possible to find the right support.
00:19:16
Speaker 1: How did you, how did you put this together? Well, you decided, uh, there, there's obviously a need here for this, like the, the, the questionnaire, the 60 second questionnaire to help people understand what kind of help they need. How did, Did you turn to experts in putting that together, or what did you do?
00:19:36
Speaker 3: It's a great question. We work with some amazing experts. There's an organization called the National Network of Depression Centers, the NNDC. It's this leading consortium of university health systems, Harvard, Stanford. Michigan, Duke, Emory, Cornell. We source the clinical leaders from the top universities across the country, and they form the expert panel that helps to shape everything in the product, from the questions that we ask, to the services that we allow into the marketplace, we've turned to the brightest minds as the sort of filter to make sure that we do the most amount of good for everyday people.
00:20:25
Speaker 1: How do someone like you... decide to do something like this? Your history is kind of interesting. You worked at the National Economic Council. You worked for BlackRock, not necessarily someone who I would think would get involved in the mental health assistance space.
00:20:45
Speaker 3: Well, I think, you know, my view has always been that none of us know how much time we have on Earth. And that I think the measure of a life is whenever the end comes, did you use your time, talent, and treasure to do as much good for as many people as possible? And one of the things that I saw, there was a couple of things that I saw that were really frustrating to me. What I saw on one hand when I was at BlackRock was that you had this incredible ecosystem in America that was incubating and accelerating incredible technology startups that were generating huge amounts of wealth for people, but there was not an equivalent ecosystem that was encouraging entrepreneurs to use technology to solve social issues. And I don't think technology solves every social issue or even a majority, but I do believe that technology could be used to solve more of our pressing social issues than it does today. And at the same time, I've just grown up in a culture and a world where young people, people my age, have a much deeper understanding of the urgency of the mental health crisis and the need to do more. And so when Chris and Harry told me this story about Logic's song, I thought it was so profound that a song from a hip-hop artist would not only go seven times platinum and be nominated for two Grammys, but that it could inspire so many people to seek help and save so many lives. It just felt to me that Logic was tapping into something that was sort of a generational thing unique once in a lifetime opportunity to have an impact. And this became the opportunity to bring all those threads together in the service of trying to make the mental health space radically different and radically better for every commuter.
00:23:04
Speaker 1: Couple more minutes here with Philip Shermer, founder and CEO of Project Healthy Minds. The website is projecthealthyminds.com. We've talked about some of the barriers to people obtaining mental health. assistance, the stigma still surrounding it, knowing where to go to get information, where to start finding someone you can trust, because I think that's part of it as well. None of this is free. The website is free. Using your website is free, but the therapy, the assistance itself is not. How do you deal with that at Project Healthy Minds?
00:23:43
Speaker 3: Well, some of it is free. So this is what's interesting about the platform. So if we zoom out for a moment, if you look across all the different types of mental health support, some category of mental health support are free, like support groups, which a lot of people turn to are typically free. But there's also a whole set of niche mental health services that either are provided by local nonprofits that do provide free services, or they are providers who accept Medicaid or Medicare. And so think about what kinds of services do we want in the platform? Our answer is we want all of it. The goal is that no matter what your circumstances, we are trying to have as many people options for you as possible.
00:24:45
Speaker 1: This isn't like hiring a lawn person or a cleaning lady or a mechanic to fix your car. This is an area where the wrong advice or bad advice could do some real harm to someone. How do you vet the people and the groups that are available through projecthealthyminds.com?
00:25:08
Speaker 3: It goes back to those clinical experts. from the National Network of Depression Centers, that leading consortium of university health systems, Harvard, Stanford, UCSF, Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Duke, Emory, Michigan, Penn Cornell. The clinical leaders from across that network serve as our clinical and scientific advisory council. And those clinicians create the screening
criteria that we use to determine which services are allowed onto the marketplace and when. And the majority of the services that we reviewed as of today, we actually don't accept. So we try to be very choosy in terms of what we allow onto the platform so that it is high quality for people.
00:26:02
Speaker 1: Is, is the stigma still the biggest roadblock you think to not only people getting the information that you're trying to provide to them, but even encouraging them to come forward. You work with celebrities, athletes, public figures. that openly talk about mental health struggles. It seems like as far as we've maybe come with discussing that openly in our country, it's still, I don't know if I want to say frowned upon, but still not an easy thing for people to do.
00:26:35
Speaker 2: Totally.
00:26:35
Speaker 3: And the proof is in the data because the average American who does access mental health care has waited more than a decade between when their symptoms arise to when they got help for the first time. So, yes, two things can be true at the same time. Younger generations can have less stigma than their parents' generation, and we still have an enormous stigma issue, and it shows up in all of these ways. It's that people delay and put off and feel uncomfortable asking for help. So while they might get help, you know, more than 11 years. If you waited 11 years on average to get cancer care when you were diagnosed, it would be tragic for you. And so this idea, like all things in healthcare, the ballgame is prevention, early identification, and early intervention. And so the ballgame is we have to make people comfortable to go seek out. The other piece of the equation is Because there's low literacy rates in this country on mental health, a lot of people don't realize that the symptoms that they're exhibiting are actually a mental health condition. So, yeah, the stigma is super important. And just to pull that apart, the reason why culture makers are so important, the reason why it's not just about them saying, oh, mental health matters. It's actually about them sharing the story that they've gone through. Because All of us learn by seeing and hearing stories of other people's journeys because we can then relate to those stories. Oh yeah, I also struggle with that. Oh yeah, I also did that. And when you talk about these culture makers, musicians, athletes, comedians, YouTubers, whatever, those are sort of the modern role models that people are looking up to. And so when you see somebody like a Logic or a Chance the Rapper talk about mental health, it inspires their fans to say, well, hey, maybe it would be okay for me to reach out and ask somebody for help.
00:28:57
Speaker 1: ProjectHealthyMinds.com is the website. ProjectHealthyMinds.com. Philip Shermer is the founder and CEO of Project Healthy Minds. Thanks so much for the time, the information, and what you're doing with Project Healthy Minds. Best of luck.
00:29:14
Speaker 3: Well, Manny, I can't thank you enough for having me on and spending some time talking about mental health.
00:29:28
Speaker 1: I am Manny Munoz. I appreciate you listening to iHeartRadio's Communities this week. As always, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, reach out to me on Instagram. My handle is at IODManny. That's at I-O-D-M-A-N-N-Y. And that'll do it for another edition of iHeartRadio's Communities. I'm Manny Munoz. Until next time.