Lara Ramsburg, head of corporate affairs at Viatris, joins Cheddar News to talk about the company's partnership with Sesame Workshop and the importance of prioritizing kids' mental health. 

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Sesame Workshop and Viatris Help Families Talk About Mental Health 

max between bells everyone. One global healthcare companies looking to help kids sort through their emotions via trees is teaming up with sesame workshop to create new resources and content for kids and their families. The goal is to support the social and emotional needs of families across all generations. Let's take a look, hmm It sounds like you're feeling upset. Well sometimes I feel upset too, but now that we know how you're feeling, we can do something to help you feel better, what can we do, Mommy, we can blast off like a rocket ship. Come on, astronaut Elmo, let's try it. Elmo and his mommy scrunch their bodies uptight three, 21 blaster. Elmo feels upset. How does that not put a smile on your face joining us Now Lara Ramsburg, head of corporate affairs for Beatrice Lara, welcome to the show, was so excited to have you thank you for having why was teaming up with sesame workshop, The perfect organization to work with for your company. Well, first of all it's sesame workshop. So I don't know that anybody that doesn't get excited about doing that, But if I step back really, the partnership began in 2020 at the height of the pandemic and we were looking for ways in which we could help beyond just the access to medicine that we provide every day as part of our business and we had an opportunity through our corporate social responsibility program to meet Sesame workshop and the team there and we decided to try to start to talk about one of the things that we could do to partner together to help and it became pretty clear that our missions really complemented each other, ours is to empower people worldwide to live healthier at every stage of life. So that's Children, parents, grandparents and health as you know, is is encompassing of more than just physical health and theirs is to grow smarter, kinder, stronger Children around the globe. And what really tied it all together was the global reach of Sesame Workshop, which I didn't fully appreciate at the time until having conversations with them. They really are global and it brings the same smile to people's faces around the globe as it does to us here in the United States and so with that we we said, well let's come together and see what we can do and and they, because of their expertise and their resources, created these bundles of, of educational resources, videos, materials to help Children and families navigate as you said, the social, the emotional aspects of Covid during the pandemic and we really found that people gravitated towards that because they were needing those resources and now in phase two of the partnership that we just, we're in the middle of right now, obviously we're still in the middle of pandemic. We're just at a different stage and there's different types of conversations happening between Children and families and that's that's what we're trying to solve for today. I want to talk about these new videos, how are they helping kids alongside their families? Yeah, I think it really it helps open up a conversation. I think between caregivers again, whether it's parents, grandparents, just friends of of Children around things that they're facing. So for example the first series of in in Phase two was around goodbyes. So we're at a point now where you have parents either going back to work, Children going back to school and that's a different dynamic than has many have faced over the last two years, how do they get comfortable with that? How do they have a conversation find ways to make it feel okay to them? There's the sesame talks often about big feelings and how Children are experiencing things that they can't quite articulate. Um how can we help parents draw out those conversations and also help parents validate that their feelings are important as well and that's what's happening to them isn't just happening to them. I think when they see the muppets and they see sesame workshop addressing these things, it kind of, I can see in their faces, they think I'm not alone, this is happening to other people and not just me. You mentioned how stressful the pandemic has been for kids and adults alike, what our kids facing now as we're coming out, I would like to say, or at the end of the pandemic. Yeah, I think again, I think kids aren't facing all that much different than what we're all facing. You know, we're all still going through the pandemic and going through the stages of the pandemic and again, whether it's you are now going back to school or your parents are not going to be in the house, like they have been or your uh things are they? Kids tend to then think about things in ways that come out in ways that they don't articulate. They might have stomach aches or they might have sleep pattern problems or they might get quiet. So how do we pay attention to those signs and then help understand and have conversations about what it is that they're feeling because I think, I think all of us We are seeing every day the impact that it's having on everybody and I and kids are not immune to that. The CDC did research that shows that emergency department visits around mental health for Children from the ages of 5-17 across the spectrum have a significantly increased during the pandemic. And we're seeing that every day. Why do you think parents, some parents have such a hard time acknowledging that their kids maybe having those difficult emotions that are tough to process. I think it's again, I think people sometimes think that it's only happening to them and maybe some things that that they're not sure how to have those conversations themselves about their own mental health. I know it's national mental health awareness month here in the US, but I think unfortunately, or fortunately you can take it both ways. It's really mental health awareness day every day right now because mental health was certainly a very important topic and very serious topic before the pandemic. But I don't know anyone that isn't thinking about mental health in a different way today after the pandemic and isn't having conversations about it in their daily lives. And I think hopefully not only because we're all now, hopefully talking about it a little bit more, but because then when you see these resources that sesame workshop brings brings to the fold, it gives you a mechanism to have those conversations start to have that dialogue and the more we talk about it, the more it becomes less of a stigma and the more the less that you feel like, well something's wrong with me or something's wrong with my child if we're having these feelings and we aren't able to navigate it in the way that we would like Very, very quickly. I only have about 20 seconds. But I do want to ask you this, what should parents look out for? What's symptoms or behavior patterns should they look out for when it comes to their Children? And certainly, and I don't claim to be the expert but based on the research that sesame has done in the clinical psychologists that are also part of of these resources and these programs. I think again, as we talked, it's behavioral changes, It's things that might seem out of the ordinary, It might be things that again, our sleep patterns are stomachaches, our isolation. We are part of the series, talks about screen time and people whether you're spending an inordinate amount of time in front of a screen and not interacting with your family or with your friends. So looking for those types of signs and then finding ways. And I think some of the resources help provide ways for people to talk about. What are those questions? I need to ask my child to try to pull out of them. Are they having a problem? And if so, what is it? And can we address it? Because I think silence is really the last thing that anybody wants. This is such an important topic. I'm so glad you're on the show to discuss this. We hope you come back Lara Ramsburg, head of corporate affairs for Beatrice. Thank you again. Thank you.