Mike Stroh is a true patient leader who is fighting to improve the lives of his members and the greater mental health community. He has built Starts With Me into a champion of youth and teen mental health awareness and continues to create opportunities for young people to have their voices heard and empowered. He’s pushed his own personal limits to fight for this cause. We sat down with him to hear more about Starts With Me and the personal story that drives him.

If you’d like to make sure Mike has the resources to continue this amazing work, find out how you can support Starts With Me.

PC: What work does Starts With Me do? What’s your mission?

MS: What we are doing with Starts With Me is trying to create spaces for conversations about mental health that change lives. We do that through public speaking appearances, monthly events, and different programming in high schools and universities. We also just started a youth mental health and innovation festival for high school students called the State of Mind festival. Our mission with all of this is to create opportunities to have honest dialogues about mental health with younger people and those who interact with [...] continue the story

Richard Branson recently joined a growing group of venture capitalists investing in online pharmacies. The one he chose is from New York City called Capsule, and as he explains they are “tackling the consumer pharmacy experience from the ground up.” From Branson’s blog post about Capsule: It is no secret that going to the pharmacy is painful. Customers can wait on average an hour or more, almost half the time the pharmacy is out of stock, and there are unexpected costs. Add the embarrassing interactions with staff without a private place to discuss your medications with a pharmacist. Customers go to the pharmacy once a month but take medication every day. It is the most frequent healthcare experience and if it is fundamentally improved then the entire system will benefit. Capsule removes the aisles of sweets, fizzy drinks and greeting cards and focuses on prescriptions. They swap expensive retail rent for delivery, and they’re building the first brand to engender emotions in the space and to retain customers and drive better health outcomes.

His description of a pharmacy reads like an infomercial showing someone cutting tomatoes just before they’re enlightened by the magic of slap chop. Many new online pharmacy start-ups are telling us [...] continue the story