Our Health Policy Matters

I am thirty years old.  Three months ago, I was settling into the house my fiancé and I bought last year. I was celebrating my engagement, planning a fall wedding, and thinking about starting a family soon. After eight years of working for another agency, I was also really happy to be out on my own, setting up a nonprofit to provide services to people with developmental, physical, and intellectual disabilities. My nonprofit, Community Navigators, was about to be approved by the State of Connecticut.  Then I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had a double mastectomy this month. When I developed some new pain, I went to the emergency room. They found that the cancer had already spread. I would still like to run my nonprofit, provide services to others, be married and have children. But now I have to change my plans. I am starting treatment immediately.   I’m not going to have time to freeze any eggs or embryos first and for now I can’t really think about having children....

I am thirty years old.  Three months ago, I was settling into the house my fiancé and I bought last year. I was celebrating my engagement, planning a fall wedding, and thinking about starting a family soon. After eight years of working for another agency, I was also really happy to be out on my own, setting up a nonprofit to provide services to people with developmental, physical, and intellectual disabilities. My nonprofit, Community Navigators, was about to be approved by the State of Connecticut.  Then I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had a double mastectomy this month. When I developed some new pain, I went to the emergency room. They found that the cancer had already spread. I would still like to run my nonprofit, provide services to others, be married and have children. But now I have to change my plans. I am starting treatment immediately.   I’m not going to have time to freeze any eggs or embryos first and for now I can’t really think about having children....

 After 7+ years as President and CEO of Mental Health America, I retired on June 30, 2021. During that time, MHA accomplished a lot. It changed the ways we think about mental health and mental illness. We introduced our MHA screening program . It became the most successful early identification program ever, especially for children. Today, 10 million people have completed a free, anonymous screening with MHA and received targeted follow-up resources for their mental health. This number will grow by millions each year. We created our B4Stage4 messaging frame. Arguing that mental health conditions were the only chronic diseases that as a matter of public policy we waited until Stage 4 to treat, and then often inappropriately only through incarceration, we said we needed to act before Stage 4. Local, national, and international partners helped us advance this frame and change the way we approach and treat serious mental health conditions – because all mental health condition...

 After 7+ years as President and CEO of Mental Health America, I retired on June 30, 2021. During that time, MHA accomplished a lot. It changed the ways we think about mental health and mental illness. We introduced our MHA screening program . It became the most successful early identification program ever, especially for children. Today, 10 million people have completed a free, anonymous screening with MHA and received targeted follow-up resources for their mental health. This number will grow by millions each year. We created our B4Stage4 messaging frame. Arguing that mental health conditions were the only chronic diseases that as a matter of public policy we waited until Stage 4 to treat, and then often inappropriately only through incarceration, we said we needed to act before Stage 4. Local, national, and international partners helped us advance this frame and change the way we approach and treat serious mental health conditions – because all mental health condition...

From time to time, I take a look at this blog - a collection of nearly 200 essays now aging in place - because I want to remind myself about how I thought about health policy broadly and the health and mental health policy issues that were hotly debated around the time the Affordable Care Act was being crafted and implemented. I think about how my own narrative and the narratives of my family members were affected by policy decisions made by others. There are plenty of commentators and scholars who know a whole lot more about this stuff than I ever did. So, most of my blogs have no historical significance at all - although one may someday.  It includes my first written expression of the "Before Stage 4" concept that became a hashtag (#B4Stage4) and the messaging frame for the work of Mental Health America beginning in 2014, a frame that was widely embraced by the mental health advocacy world. I posted only a handful of new blogs here while I was the position as President and ...

From time to time, I take a look at this blog - a collection of nearly 200 essays now aging in place - because I want to remind myself about how I thought about health policy broadly and the health and mental health policy issues that were hotly debated around the time the Affordable Care Act was being crafted and implemented. I think about how my own narrative and the narratives of my family members were affected by policy decisions made by others. There are plenty of commentators and scholars who know a whole lot more about this stuff than I ever did. So, most of my blogs have no historical significance at all - although one may someday.  It includes my first written expression of the "Before Stage 4" concept that became a hashtag (#B4Stage4) and the messaging frame for the work of Mental Health America beginning in 2014, a frame that was widely embraced by the mental health advocacy world. I posted only a handful of new blogs here while I was the position as President and ...

This is the view outside my hotel deck this afternoon in Half Moon Bay, CA. It's really beautiful. But it's not the view I was expecting. I was expecting a grittier view as I visited for a few hours with my son Tim somewhere in downtown San Francisco's Mission Street area. I travel a lot for my job as President and CEO of Mental Health America. When those trips bring me to northern California, I always try to build in some extra time so I can visit with Tim. Today was no exception. I got up at 3:15 am to catch a 5:30 am flight out of Washington that got me to San Francisco by 11. I have something for work at 6, so I expected to have several hours with Tim. But visiting with Tim takes planning in advance. Tim has schizophrenia. He has lived in San Francisco for the last decade. He has often been homeless, or in jail, or in treatment. Even when he has housing, he doesn't stay in one place very long, and he doesn't have a phone. So I make my plans through t...