Healthy Conversations

We’re re-releasing a special two-part episode about innovations in suicide prevention in recognition of Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. In this second episode, Dr. Seth Feuerstein, the CEO of Oui Therapeutics, talks about his company’s digital therapeutics aimed at reducing suicide – which he calls “the only leading cause of death without any prescription products.” He speaks with our host, Dr. Daniel Kraft, about using software as a medical device and explains the road to FDA approval for his company’s products. Dr. Feuerstein describes their digital therapeutic as “a multidimensional interactive experience” that typically lasts 10 to 12 weeks under the direction of a clinician. “You might work with a chatbot function, you might interact with other patients, you might work on practicing exercises to refine the way you brain might react to certain situations,” he says. Studies about its effectiveness have been promising.  Cara McNulty, President of Behavioral Health and Mental Well-being at CVS Health®, introduces this episode by looking at the many tools and programs available to help reduce suicide, including those listed below.Suicide prevention resourcesCVS Health mental health resourcesOui TherapeuticsAmerican Foundation for Suicide PreventionMental Health First AidThe Trevor ProjectThe Jed Foundation

In recognition of Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, today we’re re-releasing a special two-part episode with Dr. Seth Feuerstein, a psychiatrist and researcher who’s made the study and treatment of suicide his life’s work. Dr. Feuerstein is the CEO of Oui Therapeutics, which is building life-saving digital therapeutics to help in preventing suicide. He and our host, Dr. Daniel Kraft, have a wide-ranging discussion about misconceptions, data and innovations in suicide prevention. Dr. Feuerstein also challenges the way health care professionals think about suicide. “The suicidal state of the brain is a lot like the arrhythmia state of the heart,” he says. “It’s a relatively spontaneous period where there’s an elevated risk of sudden death.” Reframing our thinking about suicide in this way, Dr. Feuerstein explains, will make it easier for clinicians to talk about it. Cara McNulty, President of Behavioral Health and Mental Well-being at CVS Health®, introduces this episode by looking at the latest reporting from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which says suicide rates in the U.S. are again on the rise. She discusses how CVS Health is using a systematic approach to reduce suicide attempts and raise awareness of suicide prevention. Suicide prevention resourcesCVS Health mental health resourcesOui TherapeuticsAmerican Foundation for Suicide PreventionMental Health First AidThe Trevor ProjectThe Jed Foundation

If you look around, you’ll probably notice that the U.S. population is getting older. In fact, one in five people will be retirement age by 2030. And the latest Health Trends Report, The Future of Healthy Aging, quotes the U.S. Census Bureau that three out of five people over the age of 65 manage two or more chronic conditions. “If we go back maybe 60 years or so, 40% of health care in America was delivered at home. Today it's only about 1% of care that is delivered at home,” Sree Chaguturu, MD, Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, CVS Health, notes. “But when you ask people, especially seniors, ‘Where would you like to get care?’ Four out of five individuals say, ‘I would like to get care at home.’” The good thing is that while health care needs are growing for older adults, the options for value-based accessible local and at-home care services are expanding, as well.In this Healthy Conversations episode, Dr. Chaguturu details different ways CVS Health is bringing care services directly into the neighborhoods of older adults. For instance, CVS’ acquisition of Signify Health is helping understand patients’ health risks with 2.5 million in-home evaluations, which it then shares with providers, primary care teams, and health plans. He concludes, “It's incredibly simple but fundamental. By just spending time in a patient's home, it really allows us to make sure that that patient is getting what they need, and it's customized for their particular health situation.” Learn moreHealth Trends Report   MinuteClinic Age-Friendly Health Systems Commitment Embracing Healthy Aging  

Primary care is the backbone of the health care system. So the question is, how do you keep the primary care system itself healthy? That’s the timely topic of this Healthy Conversations episode, where Sree Chaguturu, MD, Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for CVS Health, addresses the challenges of delivering the right care at the right time, and in the right place. As he puts it, “Almost 80% of individuals in America say that they're unsatisfied with their current health care experience. The average wait time to see a primary care physician is almost one month. But when you do have primary care, great things happen.”While primary care has been largely under-invested in over the last few decades, Dr. Chaguturu notes that the development of an omnichannel health care approach – in person, in clinic, virtually, or at home – is helping amplify accessibility. He also describes how an emphasis on value-based care can benefit both HCPs and consumers. In the end, as he says, “There is not going to be one right answer. We need all of these different models to succeed, to get primary care to a better state than what it is today.”Learn morePrimary care servicesVirtual primary care 

While the health care industry can be challenging, with complex regulations and long-established bureaucracies, an innovative company called Redesign Health is working to transform it from within. Redesign Health is one of a number of organizations that received fresh funding last fall to boost health care startups from CVS Health Ventures, a unit of CVS Health which focuses on data-driven medicine and digital health investments. And in just the last five years, Redesign’s New York-based team of about 300 has helped launch more than 50 tech-enabled health care businesses – providing not only talent and capital, but the scaffolding and support to launch them.Neil Patel, head of New Ventures at Redesign Health, explains how they’ve already improved patient care and touched the lives of more than 10 million people across health verticals that include treating cancer, tele-audiology, senior care, COVID-19 testing, metabolic health, as well as mental health. As he notes, “There's no shortage of problems to solve in health care, the question is the when and the how, as opposed to if you should do it.” Patel is joined by Andrea Messina, executive director and partner at CVS Health Ventures, who characterizes the investment in Redesign Health as an indirect opportunity to sustain and build new companies. "They take a lot of the most, as we see it, difficult elements of starting a new company out of the equation for prospective founders," Messina says.Learn moreCVS Health VenturesRedesign Health

How are we doing right now in terms of mental health in the United States?  According to Dr. Taft Parsons III, the Chief Psychiatric Officer at CVS Health, the situation is alarming: “Before COVID, we already knew that there was more need for mental health services than there were clinicians. And so we have seen an increased demand across all age groups, across all demographics taking place over the last couple years.” In a recent CVS Health Trends report, 39% of providers admitted to having a high level of concern about the mental health of their patients over 65. At the other end of the age spectrum, three in five teen girls felt persistently sad or hopeless in the latest research from the CDC.On this episode, Dr. Parsons talks about the importance of identifying people who are at risk for social isolation and providing greater access to care. As he says, one silver lining from the pandemic is that “There was kind of this acceptance of people talking about their emotional needs. If you ignore it, if you cover it up, you suffer all sorts of other health effects.”Learn more  Health Trends Report: The Future of Healthy AgingMental health services from CVS Health

Genomics may seem like a field of study with minimal impact on our daily lives. But not for much longer — and certainly not to Dr. Deepak Srivastava, a cardiologist and president of the Gladstone Institutes. Rapid technological advances in this field are starting to surface across health care with significant and promising benefits. “The new world,” says Dr. Srivastava, “is going to be one where, as we identify the known genetic causes, we no longer have to accept that that mutation exists. We finally in medicine have the opportunity to think about curing disease.”The nonprofit Gladstone Institutes focuses on four key disease areas – the heart, brain (including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s), viral (like HIV and Covid), as well as immunologic disorders. On this episode of Healthy Conversations, Dr. Srivastava tells about advances like reprogramming support cells in the pancreas into new insulin-producing cells for diabetes: “So we can take skin or blood cells from any adult and turn those into cells that behave just like a human embryonic stem cell, which has the property that it can become once again any of our over 200 different cell types in the body.” The future may indeed be here, sooner than you think.    Learn more https://gladstone.org/

It’s been more than 20 years since the human genome was first sequenced.  And now, a new version that’s been updated with 47 men and women of diverse origins, including African Americans, East Asians, West Africans, and South Americans, among others, promises to benefit all people, regardless of their race, ethnicity or ancestry. This new version, called the “pangenome,” was announced earlier this month by the National Human Genome Research Institute, a government agency that funded the research.On this episode of Healthy Conversations, Trish Brown, the Genomics and Precision Medicine Program Director for CVS Health, details for Dr. Kraft how we can translate genomics into access to care, and what’s the human impact, going forward.  “So what we're capable of, now, in terms of isolating, finding DNA and what we can do with it at different stages is just incredible,” Trish notes.  “We have next generation sequencing testing platforms where if you wanted to, you could sequence the entire human genome and then you use bioinformatic filters to just pull out of that what you think is relevant. And so those sorts of technological advances have really dropped the cost and really allowed for a broader set of testing.” Learn more6 Things to know about genetic testing The value of genetic testing 

Are Americans underestimating their mental health struggles? A new study from CVS Health and Harris Poll found that nearly three in four Americans describe their mental health as “excellent” or “good,” and only one in 10 say their mental health has gotten worse in the last year. Yet nearly 60% of physicians report declining mental health among their patients. Why aren’t more people willing to talk about their feelings of anxiety, sadness, or the “blues”? In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, we present a special episode from LinkedIn’s Anxious Achiever podcast featuring, Cara McNulty, President, Behavioral Health and Mental Well-being at CVS Health. “Mental well-being is part of our physical well-being, which is a part of our total well-being,” says Cara. “Instead of trying to pretend that our head is not attached to our bodies, let's reframe how we talk about mental well-being.” In the interview with host Morra Aarons-Mele, Cara traces her career path as a population scientist along with her personal and professional experience with mental health. Cara and Morra open up about their mental health challenges as mothers and talk about the persistent myths around mental illness in our culture and health care system.   “Mental illness just means a chronic condition that you're dealing with like schizophrenia, like bipolar,: explains Cara. “That doesn't mean you're broken. … We don't tell people who have colon cancer that they're broken.”Learn more Mental health awareness guide for young adults (PDF)Mental health awareness guide for parents and caregivers (PDF)LinkedIn Presents: The Anxious Achiever 

A recent CDC study reported that one in 36 children in the United States is diagnosed with autism. Today’s guest, Temple Grandin, is one of the country’s most renowned voices on autism with an incredible ability to open up and share her perspective on the world with us. A professor of animal science at Colorado State University, Grandin has been a pioneer in improving the welfare of farm animals for decades. She is the author or co-author of more than 60 scientific papers on animal behavior and more than a dozen books that include the best-sellers “Thinking in Pictures” (which became an HBO movie starring Claire Danes) and “Animals in Translation.” Her latest book, “Visual Thinking,” explores neurodivergent thinking and the different ways our brains are wired. As she explains, “I didn't know until I was [in my] late thirties that other people thought in words. Everything [for me] comes up like snapshots and little mini-videos, and it was a shock for me to learn that other people were not visual thinkers.” In honor of Autism Acceptance Month, Temple spoke with Dr. Kraft about how the perception of autism has changed and how diversity of thinking makes us all stronger: “I think we need to have collaborations between the different kinds of thinkers, recognize that the different kinds of thinking exist and look at where there are complementary skills.”Learn moreTemple GrandinCVSHealth.com