Hello and welcome to Living in the Lehigh Valley, where our focus is your health and wellness.

I'm your host, Brittany Sweeney.

In the early months of the pandemic, Dr. Rachel Levine led Pennsylvania's Coronavirus Response and Action Plan.

She's now the US assistant secretary for health and on a national tour focused on transforming the mental health system.

She recently paid a visit to the Lehigh Valley.

And we're looking at all aspects of the behavioral health system and ways that we can improve it for patient care.

As the number of people seeking mental health treatment increases, Admiral Rachel Levine is meeting with health care professionals to better understand how to address those needs.

We see the challenges that people are facing.

We see the mental health challenges that people are facing, the substance use challenges, and we're working to understand them better and working to address them.

Levine was in Bethlehem recently meeting with medical experts at Saint Luke's University Health Network on the topic.

We've seen about 36% growth And if you saw that in a retail store, you'd be thrilled when you see about 36% growth in the need for mental health services.

You know that there's something happening.

We're anticipating that to happen two fold.

The pandemic has shown us that a lot of us have anxiety, depression or other vulnerabilities that we never saw before.

So I think we need to take that and run with it and decommission the stigma around mental health, make people feel comfortable to reach out, to raise their hand, to talk to a family member or friend, to talk to their family doctor, to feel like they can be heard.

Saint Luke's Chief of Behavioral Health and psychiatry, Dr. James James and network administrator Jody McCloud Missmer both attended the round table to voice concerns to the assistant secretary for health.

We've learned some things throughout this pandemic telehealth, virtual care, is effective.

It works.

Will it continue and then really take it back over to being able to find staff and make things sustainable for the future?

Dr. James says those in the health field need to find ways to meet people where they're at by expanding services through resources such as virtual care.

But making sure that the people that need it most, which unfortunately oftentimes the people that can't get the access, they can't drive to the locations, the services are too far away, or they don't know how to connect with them or the services they have.

The wait lists are too long.

So making sure that we can meet them and get there.

Dr. Levine says gathering these ideas is a main objective of the tour, as well as finding ways to address the growing need in the younger population.

We are looking specifically at child and adolescent mental health, which is something I've been involved in for really throughout my career looking at, again, transformative ways that we can provide those services.

The pediatrician says one way to help is buy integrating physical and mental health care together.

We need to use telehealth for mental health, and we've been working on doing that.

St Luke's is doing that.

We're looking to do that across the nation.

So lots of innovative solutions for the mental health challenges that we have.

Dr. Levine is the highest ranking transgender official in U.S. history, and as part of her focus on mental health, she is urging young physicians to speak up against political and other attacks on young trans people and their families, attacks that she says can lead to depression and trauma.

Even suicide.

One of her goals, she says, is to educate about the LGBTQ community.

And that will do it for this edition of Living in the Lehigh Valley.

I'm Brittany Sweeney, hoping you stay happy and healthy.