"I want to tell the people that I want to tell. And I want it to be easy for me to do that. And I want it also to be easy for me to be like, Hey, I don't want to tell that person and that that be okay. And just like have it be a normal thing like anything else you would tell somebody about yourself."

That's Egan, a former patient of the Stanford Gender Clinic who underwent hormone replacement therapy. He explains the importance of identity and how and when to share that with peers. Our identities are a huge part of who we are, and that includes our gender identity. Transgender youth make up just 3% of the population but they're also at greatest risk of suicide compared to their non transgender peers because of rejection, bullying and other victimization.

In honor of Pride Month, join us as we celebrate the Stanford Gender Clinic, a unique program that is rising to the new standard of promoting equitable, inclusive care for LGBTQ+ people and their families.

What does it mean to keep the mother’s health front and center? For Dr. Yasser El-Sayed, Obstetrician in Chief at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford, it’s very important to keep mom’s health a priority when you are dealing with complicated births, such as those requiring fetal surgeries. Dr. El-Sayed leads the maternal and fetal medicine programs at Packard Children's, offering specialized comprehensive care to expectant moms with high risk pregnancies.

In this conversation, Dr. El-Sayed discusses how the maternal fetal medicine programs address complicated births and philanthropy’s role in helping provide top-notch patient care at Stanford Children’s Hospital. You’ll also hear from Karen and Angel, who spoke about their daughter, Victoria’s, experience with a groundbreaking fetal surgery to treat her spina bifida.

0:01 - Introduction to Karen and Victoria’s story

1:50 - Why Dr. El-Sayed chose to work with mothers and babies

5:40 - Karen and Victoria’s story, continued

7:17 - The fetal program at Stanford Children’s Hospital and types of complications treated

13:02 - How Stanford Children’s Hospital helped a pregnant woman give birth with COVID

15:59 - How a recent gift from David and Lucile Packard Foundation will impact care

22:48 - Developments in research around the placenta

26:40 - Karen and Victoria’s story, continued

27:33 - Philanthropy’s role 

31:52 - Midnight Rounds, the hospitals unofficial band

34:37 - How Dr. Yasser El-Sayed relates to nature

About the Podcast

Care + Cures: Advancing children's health in Silicon Valley (a Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health podcast) unites families, donors, doctors and more to advance transformative healthcare for children. Echoing the innovative spirit of Lucile “Lu” Packard, the children’s hospital’s visionary founder, Care + Cures delivers stories of patient triumphs and challenges, medicine’s successes and failures, and the power of community support—all coming together to change the world, one child at a time.

About the Host

Sarah Davis is a podcast producer and learning experience designer with interests in storytelling, healthcare, the science of learning, and design thinking. She splits her time between the East Bay and Des Moines, Iowa, where she enjoys finding new food adventures, biking the trail networks, and admiring sunsets after hikes in the hills. You can reach her at connectedpodcaster.com.

Resources

Dr. Yasser El-Sayed: https://profiles.stanford.edu/yasser-el-sayed

Dr. Yasser El-Sayed’s website: https://www.el-sayedliterature.com/ 

Meet Victoria: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peDoyTjnV88 

Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford Receives $100 Million Gift to Reimagine a Leading-Edge Facility for the Care of Moms and Babies: https://supportlpch.org/blog/lucile-packard-children%E2%80%99s-hospital-stanford-receives-100-million-gift-reimagine-leading-edge

Dr. Yair Blumenfeld: https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/doctor/yair-j-blumenfeld

Fetal Spina Bifida: ​​

“We know it's a question of access to health care, access to clean water, or access to healthy food. We know what the cause is, but we have differences because we haven't fixed those causes. So, when we talk about health inequities, we talk about differences that are, at their root, really unjust – and quite fixable – it's just a question of political will.”

What is health equity and how does it impact youth? For youth today, access to healthcare means much more than simply providing services – to effect change, you must apply a holistic approach, taking into account variables like a child’s family background, their parents’ education, and access to technology. Researcher Dr. Chamberlain, Professor of Pediatrics, Associate Chair of Policy and Community, has been studying how culture and community, as well as how different interventions can level the playing field for children in terms of health equity.

In this conversation, Dr. Chamberlain discusses issues around health equity, including how COVID-19 affected health equity, factors that roll into disparities and some strategies that work to reduce those disparities.

1:53 - What is health equity?

3:11 - How COVID-19 shed a light on the inequality kids and teens were facing

4:53 - Telehealth’s advantages and possible disadvantages with respect to health equity

7:43 - How addressing racism, social injustice, and poverty as core determinants of health can impact a child for life

9:54 - An example of how two different kids with a similar diagnosis face different outcomes based on their backgrounds

11:39 - Implications when not everyone can take advantage of innovations

14:30 - How health inequities play out in mental health

17:35 - ​​How a mother’s education level affects her children’s health outcomes

20:34 - Strategies to reduce disparities

28:14 - Park Prescriptions program

About the Podcast

Care + Cures: Advancing children's health in Silicon Valley (a Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health podcast) unites families, donors, doctors and more to advance transformative healthcare for children. Echoing the innovative spirit of Lucile “Lu” Packard, the children’s hospital’s visionary founder, Care + Cures delivers stories of patient triumphs and challenges, medicine’s successes and failures, and the power of community support—all coming together to change the world, one child at a time.

Sarah Davis is a podcast producer and learning experience designer with interests in storytelling, healthcare, the science of learning, and design thinking. She splits her time between the East Bay and Des Moines, Iowa, where she enjoys finding new food adventures, biking the trail networks, and admiring sunsets after hikes in the hills. You can reach her at davispodcastproductions.com.

• Health Equity Considerations and Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups (CDC) https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/health-equity/race-ethnicity.html
• Confronting Racism Head On https://supportlpch.org/blog/confronting-racism-head 
• Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2775687 
• Little Libraries Program

Most mental health challenges begin in childhood, the teen years, or young adulthood. It's a burden young people and their families don't have to face alone, yet too often, they do.

"One in five young people under age 18 has a serious mental health issue at any one time," says Steve Adelsheim, MD, director of the Stanford Center for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing and clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. "But 80% of those who need care don't access care."

Stanford and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital are responding to this mental health crisis with a continuum of innovative, research-backed services—including programs aimed at prevention, early intervention, and reducing the stigma and access issues around mental health.

“Our young people know what they need. They know what their challenges are, and have a great deal of wisdom about how to build connections with other young people and how to create spaces that young people will want to use.” 

How might we co-create a more accepting culture and de-stigmatize mental health concerns for youth? In today’s environment, mental health is so important, and intervention starts early. Researchers and practitioners like Dr. Steven Adelsheim, clinical professor and associate chair for community engagement, believe that involving youth in the process of creating interventions is so key to be successful. Allcove is a space for youth to find community, support, advice or even just a moment of pause.

In this conversation, Dr. Adelsheim and Youth Advisory Group member, Emily Wang, discuss some of the mental health concerns for youth today and how schools are addressing mental health, the current state of allcove, as well as some of the reasoning behind why it was created.

“[Through using immersive technologies], we turn what could be a very negative experience from [a child’s] perception into a very positive one.”

How might we reimagine a child’s experience in the hospital so that it’s less painful and anxiety-inducing? Pediatric anesthesiologists Sam Rodriguez, MD, and Tom Caruso, MD at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, are finding innovative ways to answer this question through a program they developed called CHARIOT, which helps reduce anxiety through immersive technologies like virtual reality, augmented reality, and smart projectors.

In this episode, Dr. Caruso describes the technologies and games they've developed, how they’ve helped thousands of kids, what inspired him to work in pediatrics, and his vision to use CHARIOT to help kids worldwide.

• 1:49 - How the CHARIOT program has gamified traditional therapy for kids through virtual reality
• 4:29 - Background of the CHARIOT program and Dr. Sam Rodriguez's involvement in co-founding CHARIOT
• 8:52 - Dr. Caruso describes an early game developed, Sevo the Dragon, which incorporates smart projectors and a cartoon dragon to assist in delivering anesthesia.
• 12:22 - Dr. Caruso describes use cases for the CHARIOT program, including perioperatively, to facilitate dressing changes, and to help facilitate rehabilitation.
• 15:14 - Virtual reality "is usually utilized using a head-mounted display headset, and you place this headset over your eyes. And within the headset, you see computer-generated imagery of a world that we've created that is sometimes unlike the one you're currently in."
• 16:48 - Four facets of the CHARIOT program include hardware modification, software development, research, and clinical adoption.
• 19:20 - How Dr. Caruso became involved in pediatrics
• 21:36 - Why Dr. Caruso is passionate about working for Packard Children's Hospital
• 22:51 - "This sort of program doesn't just happen organically. It only happens if there's a passion and enthusiasm for really transforming patients' care."
• 23:48 - How the community has supported CHARIOT
• 25:08 - Regarding the need for continued support, Dr. Caruso recalls the ways immersive technology can be used. "And the use cases are not decreasing, they're expanding."
• 27:31 - Dr. Caruso's vision for a virtual center for immersive technologies at Packard Children's Hospital
• 29:27 - How Dr. Caruso spends time in nature

At Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Foundation, we are focused on elevating the priority of children's health.  As our community faces a global pandemic, investment in health care, health innovation, and health equity are more important now than ever. At the core of good care is how we relate to humanity.  

What are some of the most pressing issues children and young people face today? How might we reimagine a child’s experience in the hospital so that it’s less painful and anxiety-inducing? What does it take to get groundbreaking new research from the lab bench to the hospital bedside?  

In this season, you’ll hear from Stanford experts, like Dr. Steven Adelsheim, who is pioneering a new solution for teens and mental health. Hear how a team of anesthesiologists went from tinkering in their garage, to creating safer alternatives to giving pain meds to kids–using virtual reality and other technology!  

Join us each month on our new podcast, Care + Cures, Advancing Children’s Health in Silicon Valley as we share stories of triumphs and challenges by uniting patient families, doctors, care team members, and donors like YOU to advance transformative healthcare for children.