A new partnership between Sesame Workshop and UnitedHealthcare aims to build resiliency in children to help them navigate the COVID-19 pandemic.
Children have suffered tremendous mental stress during the pandemic. A new partnership between Sesame Workshop and UnitedHealthcare, the nation's largest private insurer, aims to teach kids how to be more resilient to help them weather the COVID-19 storm.
SPEAKERS
Arethusa Kirk, Andrea Cody, Ira Apfel
Ira Apfel
Hello and welcome to UnitedHealth Group’s Weekly Dose Podcast where we'll get you up to speed on the latest trends shaping the future of health care. I'm your host Ira Apfel
Ira Apfel
COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed unprecedented mental health strain on people, people and children in particular, children are finding it difficult even to rely on basic societal structures, such as in person schooling, and school activities. At the start of the pandemic, nearly 5.6 million children ages three to 17 had anxiety problems. That's 21% increase from 2017 to 2018. According to the America's health rankings, 2021 health of women and children report and those numbers have surely risen as we enter year three of the public health emergency. One way to help children is to teach them to be resilient, and to help children be more resilient to unlikely organizations are teaming up. United Health care the largest private health insurer in the world, and Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind Sesame Street. Here discuss the partnership and how it aims to help these children are Dr. Arethusa Kirk of United Health care and Andrea Cody of Sesame Workshop. Dr. Kirk is a board certified pediatrician and is National Senior Medical Director for United Health care community and state. Andrea Cody is a Senior Project Manager at Sesame Workshop, where she leads the development of resources on autism and tools to support children's resilience, social emotional well-being and physical and cognitive development in the face of trauma. Dr. Artesia Kirk, Andrea Cody, welcome to the podcast.
Ira Apfel
So I'll start with you, Dr. Kirk. What are you seeing in your practice with children? And what has been the impact of all this right now?
Arethusa Kirk
Thanks so much for this question. You know, these past few years have really highlighted how important resiliency is as a necessary life skill. And not just for children. But for parents and for caregivers. We know that the pandemic has really fundamentally altered everything about our experience. And children and youth really have seen massive changes in home life, school life, their community, we know personally in our personal circles and witness professionally, that it's having an effect on their mental health. And beyond that, we know that putting investments in children now will actually have a massive effect on their, their growth and development for the future. I really just wanted to ground us a little bit on some of the statistics because it really staggering up to one in five children ages three to 17 in the US has a mental, emotional, developmental, or behavioral disorder. And some of the pre pandemic stats are even more staggering. From 2009 to 2018, the share of high school students reported persistent feelings of sadness, and hopelessness increased by 40% to more than one in three students. And what you see then is that suicide behaviors have actually followed suit. And even before the pandemic, we saw that there was a really
Arethusa Kirk
impressive and staggering saddening increase in the number of suicides for children with a 30% 36% increase from 2009 to 2019. So, you know, you combine that with the fact that we've got an early estimate of this group showing more than 6600, suicide deaths and 2020 and the number of children which is upwards to 140,000. In the US that have lost a caregiver during the COVID. We know that the mental health crisis for this particular age group is very staggering.
Ira Apfel
Andrew, I'll throw it over to you. What is Sesame Workshop hearing from children and their caregivers? What are you hearing from children, their caregivers?
Andrea Cody
Thank you, Ira. We know that the COVID 19 pandemic has been difficult for families, caregivers and children as routines have been upended. And everyday life looks really different than it did before. And it's different every day. Children are having to face new and unprecedented challenges all the time. And throughout it all kids have continued to grow and change during this really challenging time. We want to help kids and every child bounce back from life's up and downs, whether they're big or small. There are many ways that we can help them get there as adults and with help from our new resources. The adults in a child's circle of care can help by demonstrating resilience through honest conversations. And of course, just by being there and being a caring presence.
Ira Apfel
Now I it's interesting that we're focusing on resilience that that kind of struck me as practice Not somebody that can keep top of mind to me anyway. So how do you define resilience? And why is it so important, particularly, particularly for this? This group? Dr. Kirk, for that overview first?
Arethusa Kirk
Yeah, it's a great question because it's really sort of the counterweight to, to stress and anxiety. At core, it's really this skillful adaptation, to learn from hardships and to build and develop on your strengths.
Arethusa Kirk
For me, you know, one of my histories and stories is that I grew up in and out of foster care. Starting at a very young age and age, that's Sesame Street focuses on an age four. And what I count as one of the key blessings in my life is the fact that I had so many teachers and influencers that really demonstrated resilience, they demonstrated skillful problem solving. So the reality is that I also had very traumatic scarring and unskillful experiences, but the core component of resilience is the ability to adjust to your changing environment, and to flex and adapt. So what we're trying to develop when we develop the skill of resilience is that central self-regard, trusting your own strength and building your own confidence. And that's what some of these resources really tap into.
Ira Apfel
Danger when I think of Sesame Workshop, and Sesame Street, I'm thinking, you know, learning ABCs and numbers. So, obviously, resilience is important to your organization, as well talk a little bit about what it means to Sesame Workshop and why it's so important.
Andrea Cody
Yeah, we add Sesame Workshop, we really look at the whole child, and there's so much that goes into making a child healthy and strong, and grow up smarter, stronger, and kinder. And Sesame Workshop and United Health care have been working together for over a decade to help support families, health care providers, and communities as they help kids grow strong, smart and kind. And we've worked together to provide resources for families and children around a variety of topics, including accessing affordable, nutritious food, finding easy ways to incorporate physical activity into their daily lives, and information on developmental milestones to help kids establish lifelong healthy habits. So we know that whether children face big or small challenges, caring adults can help them build resilience, which we see as the ability to move through challenges and bounce back from setbacks. And that in order to be able to learn your ABCs, and one, two threes, you also have to be able to build these other life skills.
Ira Apfel
The partnership come about between, you know, health care, and assess me workshop because I understand it's been going on for a while now.
Andrea Cody
And we've been working together for over a decade. And UHC has supported sesame, in creating so many wonderful resources for families, caregivers, and for providers. That's another big target area for our Sesame Street and community resources, all of the adults that helped to provide services to educate and to keep our kids healthy and strong. So we do target the adults in kids’ lives with resources around things like nutrition, healthy habits, of course, early learning, and what we also called, are tougher topics, difficult times and tough conversations. And we address these topics and help kids to build resiliency. You know, we know that there are challenges that lots of kids are facing these days. And UHC has helped us to reach more a wider audience for these topics and guided us over this wonderful partnership for the last 10 years in helping to navigate also addressing the health care sector.
Ira Apfel
Dr. Kurt, what is in this specific new partnership that's being rolled out.
Arethusa Kirk
Thank you so much IRA and Andrea, we're so proud of this partnership. What specifically coming out with this particular iteration is our resilience storybooks, which really helped Children in Crisis cope with difficulties. As I mentioned, this pandemic has really highlighted the number of difficulties that children are experiencing. And so the fact that Sesame Street has taken this on as one of their core areas in partnership with us, really speaks to their central focus on the health and development of children. What these resilience storybooks really do is kind of focus on anyone who's involved in the child's circle of care because we know that it's not just parents, there's many caregivers, that they hold an independent power and can help people and children feel safe seen and hopeful. So we're hoping that these storybooks will really highlight some of the aspects that are causing resilience like problem solving, sticking through difficult situations and being able to get back to a sense of common center
Ira Apfel
and injury overdue. How is Sesame Workshop going to roll out these resources?
Andrea Cody
All of these new storybooks and complementary resources will be available for free bilingually in English and Spanish at Sesame Street in communities.org. We have the three new storybooks on resilience feature our Sesame Street Muppets, Carly Lillian, Alex. And they are they all teach different factors of resiliency. So monster dash, which features Carly is about building flexibility, looking for special features Lily and teaches confidence and bounce back with Alex encourages practicing persistence. And we know that these are three key ingredients to building resilience. We have also created for providers an online course called roads to resilience, and it provides tailored resources and strategies on how they can use the new resilience resources with the kids and families that they work with. And this includes health care providers, educators, housing and social service providers. So there are separate tracks for all of these different provider types. And the course highlights the crucial role that providers play in the lives of young children and families and equips them with tools and new ideas to foster their own professional development around this. We know resilience is a muscle that just as we exercise our bodies to be strong, we can exercise our brains and our hearts and help take care of ourselves and figure out ways through tough situations. And as adults, we can help the kids in our lives by modeling our own resilience.
Ira Apfel
And Dr. Kirk, how is UHC? UnitedHealth care going to share these resources with patients? And how do you think ultimately, they will help patients, I guess, young ones and also their caregivers?
Arethusa Kirk
Mm hmm. Yeah, thank you for that. But for the last three years, we've actually done a number of things. Besides our decade long partnership. We have celebrated Grandparents Day with Sesame Workshop in cities across the United States. And in May, we actually recognized National Foster Care Month with a comprehensive media tour that really highlighted the Sesame Street website where they can locate these materials. We also are going to be launching something called comfy cozy spaces, which will be located in hospitals and courthouses to really help create an environment for kids that are potentially stressful places to help them have educational and fun resources. We also work very closely with our partners and providers and community based organizations to disseminate this information. So they have the resources that Andrea was providing for providers and other social workers. Everything will be located as well on our website, which is UHC community plan.com/grow. And then finally, Andrea and I are going to be hitting the road, virtually an immediate tour at the end of the month
Ira Apfel
here. I'm wondering too, this is obviously very a topic that's very near and dear to both you're both of you. You know, you have personal experiences with this, you have professional experiences with this. So I'm wondering, what do you hope will be the benefit of, of these resources? How do you think? What's your aspiration for them? I guess, I guess I should say,
Arethusa Kirk
Andrea, I'll take that first. I mean, one of the things that I've seen in practice is that there's just such a deep sense of stress that families are experiencing the number of decision points that everyone's having in a day to day has increased exponentially. And you really see that in every arena, but certainly in a clinical setting for the patient population that I've always had the privilege to serve, that's also on top of many economic struggles. So really, what I see is that this stress that parents and caregivers are feeling is mirrored in their children, their children are picking up on it, and the potential that these resources have to really help the adults and caregivers in their lives. Also be able to manage their own sense of resilience and be able to connect with their own strengths that they can then teach their children I really think has a huge amount of potential impact.
Andrea Cody
Yeah, and to build on that. We know that the Sesame Street characters are popular with kids today and they bring back childhood memories for adults. And you know, most parents today grew up on Sesame Street. So we know that the Muppets are relatable for both the kids and the caregivers in there. lives and the three storybooks feature. Our characters, Lily, Carly and Alex who have all been through really tough family situations, such as homelessness, food insecurity, foster care, the incarceration of a parent and parental addiction. And we know that those are very heavy topics. But these focus on smaller moments in these kids’ lives and how they've been able to cope with these larger challenges, but also the small day to day challenges that all kids face. And the stories can help kids and adults navigate these hard times, and demonstrate coping strategies to help kids become smarter, stronger, and kinder.
Ira Apfel
how can listeners help? Besides the obvious, you know, picking up the resources? What else can they do?
Arethusa Kirk
Well, my view IRAs that everybody who's made it through this podcast actually is already a helper, because that means that you've really got an investment in the health and well-being of children. I think also that the pandemic has shown us that for sure, we are very interdependent, and that children also don't exist in a vacuum. They exist in the ecosystem of our communities. So the fact that folks that are listening, would like to invest in their own resilience building, and then showing children what that looks like on a day to day life is an example of a clear sign of helping.
Ira Apfel
Andrew, how about you? What do you want listeners to take from this? From this this episode? And, you know, just from helping kids build resilience?
Andrea Cody
Well, I have to agree with Dr. Kirk, that I think that if you've made it this far, and you're listening, you're engaged in and you want to help your communities and the kids in your lives. And I think that you are just by being engaged. And to remember that, you know, there are so many adults that can help kids grow up more successfully, and that there are so many different touch points that we all have with the kids in our lives, to help them and to help model resiliency. And we know that this is a tough time for everyone. We've all had our own personal struggles over the last several years, you know, dealing with this pandemic, and so much more and all the changes that have come about. But, you know, by moving through it, you have shown your resiliency and I think making sure that you recognize and remember that and that you're modeling these things for kids in your lives, is really important and that if you're struggling, that's okay. And that if the kids in your lives are struggling, it's perfectly natural. When challenges arrive, and these are really unprecedented times. We, we do struggle, but I think so many people have shown the resiliency of themselves and their families. And so, you know, acknowledging that is a great step into helping the kids in your lives, you know, maintain some sense of normalcy or new normalcy.
Ira Apfel
Dr. Arethusa Kirk and Andrea Cody, thanks so much for being on the podcast today.
Arethusa Kirk
Thank you. Thank you so much for having us.
Ira Apfel
That's it for this episode of UnitedHealth Group’s Weekly Dose Podcast. You can access the resources by visiting SesameStreetincommunities.org or UHCcommunityplans.com/grow. Thanks so much for listening and have a great rest of your week.