A Dose of Optimism
A Dose of Optimism is a podcast dedicated to exploring the world of healthcare innovation and the optimists driving meaningful change.
Hosted by Omkar Kulkarni, this show shines a light on bold ideas, transformative solutions, and the passionate individuals working every day to make healthcare better for children and their families.
Each episode dives into the real-world challenges facing the healthcare industry and highlights the people and organizations pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. From tackling mental health and food allergies to reimagining hospital care and harnessing Artificial Intelligence for better outcomes. Listeners will discover game-changing solutions, hear stories of creativity and resilience, and gain inspiration from leaders who believe in building a healthier, more hopeful future.
From medical professionals and entrepreneurs to patients and community advocates, the podcast brings together diverse voices united by a shared commitment to improving healthcare delivery. Whether you’re working inside the industry or simply curious about the innovations shaping tomorrow’s care, A Dose of Optimism offers insight, connection, and inspiration.
“The content, views, opinions, and information presented on this podcast do not reflect the views of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles or of the sponsors of the podcast. CHLA does not endorse the views, opinions and information presented on this podcast and CHLA specifically disclaims any legal liability or responsibility for the podcast’s content.”
A Dose of Optimism
Teens, Tech, and Belonging: What the Data Says About Youth Well-Being
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Teenagers today are navigating something genuinely new, a world where the pressure to belong, the weight of social expectations, and the tools of social media and AI are all arriving at once, during the most identity-defining years of their lives. In this episode, two researchers and innovators share what the data actually shows about youth well-being, and what's being done to help.
Dr. Kristine Gloria, founder of YoungFutures, describes how her organization is working to fund, connect, and amplify the community programs already helping young people build the resilience, life skills, and social connections they need, and why the narrative about technology and teens needs to make more room for solutions, not just problems.
Dr. Sema Sgaier, founder of Surgo Health, shares how her team is building a behavioral intelligence layer for healthcare, and what their youth mental health research is revealing about how different groups of teens are using AI. The findings challenge the dominant narrative: AI use among youth is more a reflection of their lives and needs than a cause for alarm, and the role of parents and trusted adults turns out to be central to nearly everything.
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Welcome to the Dose of Optimism, where I talk to the optimists in healthcare. My name is Omkar Kulkarni, and I work at one of the world's best children's hospitals where I lead innovation. I started Kids X, which is a premier international startup accelerator for pediatric innovation, and over the years I've met thousands of startups, investors, and innovators. Every one of them has a story, and every one of them is optimistic about the problems they're solving. On this podcast, you'll meet amazing people who will share their stories and what makes them optimistic about the future of healthcare. A little note before we get into this episode: this podcast is for informational purposes only. We are not offering medical advice and we're not endorsing any products. Please talk to your own physician about your health or the health of your children. All right, let's get started.
SPEAKER_03I think that commitments to action with the greatest success have brought the right partners together from across sectors and are designed by those with lived experience. A great example of this is a 2022 commitment to action made by Girl Effect and Merck for Mothers, which brought public and private sector partners together to build with youth a digital solution to address unmet demand for modern contraception. So that's just one example of how we really prioritize that lived experience piece.
SPEAKER_01We talked to Christine Gloria from Young Futures. It's a unique approach around young adults and adolescents. Tell me more about what excites you here.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so Young Futures, they are, as you heard, are they all about building a stronger support system around young people, which is led by young people. So they've committed 50 million to support 500 community-based organizations across the US working at that intersection of youth, technology, and mental health. What makes this commitment so special is that it goes beyond traditional grant making and it pairs funding with capacity building, storytelling, and a national network so that solutions don't stay local, but they can grow and spread. And ultimately, it's about building this larger infrastructure for youth well-being so that every young person has the support they need to thrive, whether it's online or offline.
SPEAKER_02She's 10. She just turned 10. I will admit, like they've had technology in their hands since they were two, three years old. We've been very good about kind of the progression of their exposure to things. But what we've come to learn is that teens right now, yes, I think it's affirmative that they are navigating a space and a ton of social pressure around what it means to be a young person. And the time now is different from when I was a teen, when you were a teen, just the baseline of having expectations set for you at a very early age. Like you get that exposure really early. And then having devices or social media that amplify certain pressures means that you're holding a lot of weight as a teenager and as a young person, probably more than I certainly was exposed to at that age. And so what we're learning is any one of these technologies can move you in either direction. And what we're at Young Futures are really interested in is yes, helping those that are probably on one end of the spectrum, but there is a good number of young people they understand the state that they're in and they just need help at navigating that. That could mean, okay, let's teach you some digital habits. Don't be online really late at night because sleep is really important. Or it could be, yes, this is a safe online space for you to meet new people. This is how you do this. This is how you make sure that the people that you're chatting with are safe. Like all of those components are really important now. And I always try to double down that this digital physical world is so porous for young people. And to say, oh, that's your online life, like maybe we grew up with as Gen Xers or millennials versus what you're expected to be in real life is something that's harder for them to reconcile against.
SPEAKER_01So tell me more about what you guys are doing at Young Futures and how you're helping with teens. They may be lonely, they may be feeling a lot of pressure.
SPEAKER_02One thing that we like to say is that there are solutions here. The narrative often gets really caught up on social media is doing this, technology is bad, AI is ruining X and X. And we tend to forget that there are organizations, there are community solutions that are helping fortify young people and teenagers with the skill sets, with the resiliency, with the emotional development that will help them navigate technology, regardless if it's AI, if it's social media. And those things are based on what we've known to be true about young people, right? Like developmentally, where they are emotionally, what the social systems around them really means for their identity formation. And at Young Futures, we are bringing that ecosystem of support up through one and foremost capital. All these nonprofits and organizations always need a little bit of additional support there to continue their programming. Two is to help the leaders in those organizations bring their solutions to more people. What we're learning is that a solution in maybe a small town in Northeast North Carolina is actually the same sort of solution that they need in a small town in Montana, right? And so making sure that there's a visibility for those types of programming and solutions is helping scale programs that are useful for young people that may not necessarily be tech forward or as a platform. And then third is helping really shift this narrative. Again, there are solutions out there. I think we're just so bombarded by some of the negative out there that we failed to look to our boys and girls clubs or to our library programs or something where there is, again, programming that helps young people really just hone in on the life skills that we know are useful.
SPEAKER_01You touched upon belonging. I'm curious when teens say they feel like they don't belong, what are they really telling us?
SPEAKER_02Developmentally belonging is one of the biggest things that teens seek. The confirmation that they have peers is one of those things that we know is developmentally appropriate for that age group. They need to have affirmation from their group, maybe from their parents. That's less, that's more of a boundary setting, pushing, pushing where you need to go. But to know where they can situate themselves among their peers is really important. And so when we hear that young people do not feel like they belong, it is again, they may not feel like they belong in their physical setting. Maybe they live in a small town where there aren't a lot of, for example, LGBTQ or brown and black youth to help understand their own identity there. And so then they can find that online and vice versa, right? We certainly see the opposite of that. If you're online and you're getting cyberbullied or there's hateful messages happening, you'll feel the same way. And I think what ends up happening is you're not able to then develop that deepness in your connection because you're bouncing back and forth and you're also trying to figure out if I belong in this community, what does it mean to belong in this community? And when you have a lot of communities to manage, that's also quite a lot for a young person to have to navigate.
SPEAKER_01Christine, what is youth futures and how did it get started?
SPEAKER_02My background is I've worked in the AI nonprofit well-being space for over 10 years. And in early 2017, the portfolio that I was running at the Aspen Institute was really interested in this. We were coming up a rider around the pandemic, which is when it really picked up. And we were recognizing that one, the language around, again, this porousness that young people feel was not captured. And even the research or the rhetoric, people were really having a hard time understanding that it kind of flows between each other. So that's one. And then two, from the pandemic, we did see some interesting learnings about what it meant to be connected, socially connected with one another, when 100% mediated because we weren't allowed to go outside. Taking all of that together, a group of early thinkers around the youth development space, in the well-being space, and the social connection space really wanted to figure out how we could put language around that. And then in about 2023, one of our principal funders decided we've done a lot of field building. We've spent like five years, six years field building, and what we need is an organization to play as central node. And this was the vision for Young Futures. It plays as an ecosystem central node in order to bring together really very different viewpoints around what it means to thrive as a young person, what it means to be creating things that are developmentally appropriate, and then to also serve as a flywheel to make sure that the, again, the solutions and the organizations that have been working in this space get the funding and get the voice in how this is moving. I will say that the work that Dr. Vivek Murphy brought forward around social connection really moved the lens from tech safety, privacy, all of that conversation into a health conversation. And I think that is probably one of the biggest catalysts why we are now understanding the impact of technology on our mental health and our physical health, all components of human health.
SPEAKER_01So, Young Futures, you help young people solve a lot of these issues. What's working? What out there that you're finding that you're supporting has been working? What are some of the initiatives that you're most excited about?
SPEAKER_02Some of it's probably not a surprise, but one of the things that tends to bubble to the top are peer-to-peer interventions, right? When you're thinking about what a Gen Zier who is 20 has experienced regarding social media or their phone, that lived experience is far more relatable to someone who is 16 and 17 versus me a millennial telling a 16 or 17-year-old how they should be navigating that. So peer-to-peer interventions have been really impactful and one that we tend to have in our portfolio. I will say we have now 51 grantees we launched in 2024. So we've done five funding challenges. So we have 51 in total. And we that is one that is always that sort of intervention is always within the cohort that we do. The second one, one that we hear quite often, is young people get it, right? Like every time I'm in a conversation that doesn't recognize that young people are craving for support from their adults around these issues makes me think that person hasn't talked to a young person in a long time. Because one of the things that we do also see is as long as there is adult support or educators that come with empathy around their experience, those solutions and interventions are also super helpful. So we tend to have a track for caregivers and adult support as well.
SPEAKER_01When is your next funding challenge and what's it about?
SPEAKER_02So we just announced the cohort for the AI challenge, which we launched last week, but we're about to also launch the Express Yourself Challenge. And it's really focused on gendered experiences and technology. And what we're hearing is the outcomes, the harms that young people are facing can be really narrowly defined by gender and their identity and that intersection with identity. So for this one, we're hoping to support three different subtracts, which is a first for us. One that supports young girls and young women called Girl on Fire. The a second track called In My Dreams that helps support organizations who are helping young boys and young men navigate technology and masculinity. And then third, just the way you are for gender-expansive LGBTQ youth and their needs as they navigate online spaces and digital health, et cetera, et cetera.
SPEAKER_01And when will applications be due?
SPEAKER_02Those will be due on May 19th. So we tend to have a long LOI period so people can come in and pitch us, and then we will invite people into the full application process if we think they're ready for the next round.
SPEAKER_01We'll link it to the funding challenge in the show notes so that people can take a look and hopefully you'll get some great applications for what sound like really important problems to solve.
SPEAKER_02We're always so excited to see what's out there.
SPEAKER_01Christine, thank you so much for joining us today and talking about Young Futures and all the amazing work that you're doing. It's really impactful, and I think you're helping enable a ton of change that I think will be sustainable and community-driven and impactful as well.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. Appreciate it.
SPEAKER_03Sure. So, as part of their 2023 commitment to action with Pivotal Ventures and MTV Entertainment, they Cirgo Health developed the first ever youth mental health tracker that captures youth mental health, both illness and well-being, using various data sources, including not just numbers, but also personal narratives. And I think it's important to note that this tracker was developed in partnership with young people and mental health experts, and has a really unique equity lens honing in on populations experiencing the greatest disparities in mental health outcomes. And CGI prioritized this commitment because there's a lot of conversation about youth mental health, but we don't always have clear answers on what works. So this tool helps change that by turning real-time data into practical insights so leaders can make better decisions that actually improve young people's mental health.
SPEAKER_01Tell me more about Cirgo Health and what you're building.
SPEAKER_00Sure, yeah. So Sergo, we're very much focused on building the behavioral intelligence layer in healthcare. Essentially, when you look at how people engage in health, both in terms of their access, their journey, but also their outcomes, a lot of it is determined by what happens outside of the clinic, not just in the clinic. These could be traditional things of like SDOH, but also upstream factors, their beliefs, who do they trust, where do they get their information, the biases they use in decision making. And Sergo has been very focused on essentially trying to capture the in the invisible factors that are really critical in healthcare. And so we build data and AI products, and we work across the healthcare ecosystem to make these available to drive an impact, essentially.
SPEAKER_01So give me an example of how this could help a child or a pediatric patient.
SPEAKER_00So in specifically around youth and youth mental health, we've been building something called the youth mental health tracker to complement other data sets. So a lot of it right now is really understanding what are the, first of all, two things. One is looking at from mental health, both from the perspective of thriving as well, not just as a mental health issue, but a more holistic issue, but also really trying to measure what are those community, family, and individual level factors that are driving thriving as well as mental health. And so we essentially build data as public good. And then we look at, we're not really working with pediatricians per se, but we look at what are those drivers of youth health and well-being outcomes. And then how can that information be used by policymakers, by funders to drive resources to the right communities for the right interventions, and less so more at the level of the clinic, but more so at the level of a higher level of intervention at the community level and so forth.
SPEAKER_01So, what is something you're most proud of in terms of the accomplishments you've had so far?
SPEAKER_00I think we've been really uncovering a lot of important factors when it comes to well-being and youth. I think the most recent one, which I'm really excited about, is we've delved really deep into AI and how youth are using AI and actually are helping shift the narrative and the focus. And so a lot of the emphasis has been around safety and security, which is absolutely essential, but also more about how much time are youth using. And what we're showing it is actually how youth are using AI is more a reflection of their lives and not necessarily something that is necessarily bad. And so we're finding different types of youth. For example, we find one in 10 youth use AI in a way that actually has a lot of utility when it comes to jobs and education, and so they're very purposefully using it to upskill themselves. And these actually tend to be youth that are coming from environments that have less resources, so socioeconomically less resource, but also a lot of black youth. On the other hand, we find one in 10 youth, for example, are using it for social connection and for finding community. And Ds tend to be much more Hispanic-oriented youth or youth which are lacking that kind of connection in their lives. And then another group, similar-sized group, is one that is actually staying away from AI because they are really worried about privacy and safety. And these tend to be more LGBTQ plus youth. And so I think what's really been interesting, I'm shifting the conversation, is really looking at AI from a purpose-driven and how does it serve different types of youth in different ways and thinking about not only just policy, but also one of the things we find actually in all of our work in youth is that the interaction with parents and adults is central for everything from access to care, but also even in terms of here how to make AI a positive thing rather than a negative thing in their lives. And we've been really working on how to guide that parental youth conversation to really foster that better AI adoption because we know it's happening and learning a lot from the mistakes that we've done, I would say, in the social media space, and how do we bring that to this new technology? So that I'm very proud of because I think it's just a so timely and things are moving so fast.
SPEAKER_01And so tell me about the work you're doing with the Clinic Global Initiative.
SPEAKER_00Oh, we have a long partnership with them on multiple areas. Another space we work in is actually around clinical trials and actually works quite a bit in pediatric trials. So, how do we make sure trials are equitable? And how do we make sure that retention in trials is actually happening? Because there's huge drop-offs. A recruiting is so difficult. And sometimes even when you recruit patients, retention is an issue. And so we've launched an initiative with them around clinical trial equity and diversity, and we built a product that has been really central to that. So that's been one. Another area is actually misused mental health trackers. So we've been involved, co-launched that with them along with Pivotal Ventures. They're the biggest backers of this engagement. And then the third is around women's health. We do a lot of work around, again, similarly, how to fill the data ecosystem void when it comes to understanding people and what's driving their health engagement. Have another initiative around women's health.
SPEAKER_01Semma, thank you so much for joining us and telling us all about Sergo Health and what you're doing to help youth and adolescents as they navigate the complex world of AI. All right. Thank you for joining us for your dose of optimism. Make sure to check out our show notes to get more information about our guests and the work they're doing. Visit our podcast page on the Kids X website to join our podcast community and to learn more about pediatric innovation. Thank you to our sponsors and to our presenting partner, Kids X. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, it takes a village to make sure our kids grow into healthy adults. So volunteer at your local library, help out at the community center, and if you're so inspired, donate to your local children's hospital. Alright, see you next time. The content, views, opinions, and information presented on this podcast do not reflect the views of Children's Hospital Los Angeles or of the sponsors of the podcast.