Melinda Gates on adolescent mental health
From Melinda French Gates: The Next Chapter · · My Legacy Podcast
“I saw the profound profound difference in my two daughters in middle school. They are six years apart. I was negotiating a flip phone when the oldest one started as a six fifth and sixth grader. I was negotiating a smartphone with the one six years later. The difference that occurred in that middle school and the incidents that happened with my second daughter and her class and the class behind her and what the administration was dealing with was profound and it is why early on 2015 I started in um working on adolescent mental health because I could see where this was going.”
On , Melinda Gates, Co-Chairman at Gates Foundation, spoke about adolescent mental health during Melinda French Gates: The Next Chapter on My Legacy Podcast.
About Melinda Gates
Melinda French Gates announced a $215 million increase in her women’s health funding, bringing her total commitment to $600 million, with a focus on reproductive health, menopause, and mental health. She stated that women’s health has been “ignored and underfunded for far too long” and expressed concern about the rollback of reproductive rights in the United States, saying she never thought the country would “roll back a law that was on the books for US women.” She also said she has not directly spoken with HHS Secretary RFK Jr. about vaccine misinformation, but that the foundation has “engaged in that discussion and it has not gone well.” French Gates became a minority owner of One Roof Sports & Entertainment, the parent organization of the Seattle Kraken, and discussed the role of sports in community building and youth development. She said she has voted for candidates from both major parties and described herself as a centrist. She also spoke about her philanthropic approach, stating that 70% of Pivotal Ventures’ funding is focused on women’s power in the United States, and argued that “having the richest country in the world...but not having women all the way to the places they ought to be able to go in society does not make any sense.”