Marti Taylor: Advancing the Field of Behavioral Health

Marti Taylor is the president and CEO of OneFifteen and the Executive Director of Behavioral Health at Verily. She started her career in nursing, Prior to joining Verily and OneFifteen, she spent many years working in hospital administration.

Most recently, she served as CEO of the University Hospital and the Ross Heart Hospital at the Ohio State University, Wexner Medical Center.

On the name of her company

[6:32] OneFifteen is a sobering acknowledgement that more than 115 people were dying every day in the United States in 2017, 2018 from an opioid overdose. And it was really to show our quest to reverse this course. People that are living with substance use disorder are our sisters and our brothers, and our parents and our friends and our neighbors, and their lives are worth fighting for.

On the intersection between mental health and substance use disorders

[8:12] Often, substance use and mental health issues contribute to the expression of one another. People with mental health disorders might use substances to self-medicate, and often people with substance use disorders develop mental health issues as a result of changes to their brain. And the conditions can often exacerbate one another when people experience those simultaneously.

So there's not only an intersection between the two, but also a heightened risk of people living with both disorders.

On stigma

[16:41] Today, most people are comfortable if others know that they have a cancer diagnosis or a cardiovascular diagnosis, and that prompts others to have a sense of ‘how can I help this individual?’

And whether that's bringing a casserole over to their home or whether that's saying, ‘How can I help you at your job?’ We don't have that yet in mental health where not everyone is comfortable with others knowing that they have some sort of a mental health or a substance use disorder diagnosis. And nor do others know what to do if they do open up to them and say, ‘I have a mental health diagnosis.’

On the role of virtual care

[22:45] It is virtual first, but it is very much partnered with a human touch. And I think, especially in substance use disorder and behavioral health more broadly, we have to think about that human touch component as well. So in the last four years that I've been working at Verily, I Absolutely see the advantages that technology can do to supplement care and to complement care.

But it's not going to completely take over for care.