Welcome to the Pioneers in Health podcast. In this podcast, we share inspiring stories of pioneering leaders from our nation and from your backyard who are working to improve health.
In episode 20, we interview Kathleen Kelly Daughety, vice president of campaigns and civic engagement at Inseparable. Founded in 2020, Inseparable is a national mental health advocacy organization dedicated to increasing access to mental health care for everyone.
Kathleen has more than 15 years of experience in campaigns, strategic planning, project management and stakeholder engagement across the political, private and tech sectors. To Inseparable, Kathleen brings an undefeated electoral record; a keen interest in mental health, addiction abatement, and suicide prevention; and a commitment to making mental health an urgent priority for elected officials.
In this episode, she discusses her journey into politics and later mental health care advocacy. She shares her experience growing up in a Topeka neighborhood full of elected officials and public servants. Her state senator lived around the block, the state secretary of state down the street and Kathleen Sebelius right next door. Sebelius worked in the statehouse at the time and later went on to become Kansas governor and then the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.
“Growing up next door to her really gave me a window into what it looks like to be involved and to run for office,” Kathleen said. “Without that in my life, my career would have been very different.”
She also grew up near Menninger’s, which was a premier institution for the treatment of mental health. It was based in Topeka for more than 75 years before it relocated to Houston. Many of her friends’ parents worked in mental health, so it was commonly discussed throughout her childhood at a time when that wasn’t common.
“The stigma was removed really early on in my life in a way that maybe was later for other parts of the country,” she said.
Because of growing up in Topeka, Kathleen also was exposed to the Westboro Baptist church, a nationally known hate group that staged public protests against gay people. That, she said, played a significant role in becoming politically active and participating in the gay rights movement at a young age.
After working in politics for years, she decided to make a change. She took other positions and even started her own company, but she missed the direct social impact of being involved in politics or advocacy.
She was trying to figure out her next steps when she experienced her own mental health crisis. That experience sparked a calling to work in the mental health field and eventually led to her position at Inseparable. Inseparable works to improve mental health policy at the federal and state levels.
“People shouldn’t have to decide between crushing medical debt and a crushing illness, and that’s what we’re forcing people to do, and it doesn’t need to be that way,” Kathleen said. “There are policies we can put in place to fix that.”
She discussed the critical role Medicaid plays in providing health insurance for people. One third of people with mental health needs are covered by Medicaid, she said. The more than $880 billion in federal cuts currently being discussed to Medicaid could have a devastating impact on people with mental health needs, as well as force rural hospitals to close due to receiving less financial reimbursement when they’re already struggling financially.
“If people have access to care and they have any mental health needs and it’s served, they can thrive. If they don’t have access to care, it devolves, and it’s really dangerous,” Kathleen said. “Having access to health care is incredibly important. That is sort of the key to when people talk about the mental health crisis, we’re actually talking about an access to care crisis, and we need to solve that.”
In this episode, she also discusses:
- The prevalence of youth mental health concerns/challenges and the importance of access to care and treatment
- Inseparable’s work to advance bills for school-based mental health care through Medicaid
- The importance of having health insurance in order to access mental health care and the vital role Medicaid plays in that; Medicaid helps more people receive mental health care than any other insurance plan
- How expanding Medicaid expands access to mental health care
- The development of 988, the suicide and mental health crisis phone line
- Crisis response and funding
- How federal cuts to Medicaid would devastate mental health and hospitals
- Technology and AI in health care
- The hope she has for mental health care
- How voters across party lines support mental health issues and Inseparable’s efforts to work with politicians to address mental health care
And much more! Listen now, and learn more about how Kathleen is an innovative leader in mental health care.
Listen now
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