The Hidden Disease 40% Of Americans Are Living - Alexandra Drane

What if the biggest health crisis in America is one almost no one is being treated for?

In this episode of Inspiring Women, host Laurie McGraw sits down with Alexandra Drane, co-founder and CEO of ARCHANGELS, recorded at the WBL conference.

Alexandra has spent her career proving a simple, radical idea: when life goes wrong, health goes wrong. After gathering more than one billion data points at her former company, Eliza Corporation, she identified what she calls the unmentionables: caregiver stress, financial stress, relationship stress, and workplace stress. Her conclusion was that these are among the biggest diseases in the United States, and that at the center of all of them sits the unpaid caregiver.

Today, more than 40 percent of adults are unpaid caregivers, and between 40 and 50 percent of them are men. Drawing on both the data and her own experience caring for her sister-in-law, who died of glioblastoma at 32, Alexandra makes the case for why caregiving must be recognized, measured, and celebrated.

IN THIS EPISODE:

- How unpaid caregiving is really defined, and the many roles people never recognize as caregiving, from installing grab bars to handling finances and navigating benefits

- Why 40 to 50 percent of caregivers are men, and why so many never see themselves in the role

- How gathering over a billion data points at Eliza Corporation led her to the unmentionables

- Why she insists on broadening the definition of health to include life

- The personal loss that shaped her mission, and the founding of Engage with Grace

- Why she uses the word intensity instead of burden, and what that reframe makes possible

- The Caregiver Intensity Index, and what it means to be in the clear, yellow, or red

- Why being in the red means a 90 percent risk of a mental health impact, a 50 percent drop in productivity, and four times the cost

- How the share of caregivers in the red tripled from 8 percent before COVID and never came back down

- The sandwich generation, the panini, and the club sandwich, and why double-duty caregivers face double the intensity

- Overtreatment, the rising cost of care, and what it really means for the great wealth transfer

- The growing gap between how many people will need care and how few are available to give it

- The Care Badge, built in partnership with Joint Commission, and why a career break was never a gap, it was a job

- The skills caregivers build, and why they are exactly the people employers should be hiring

- Grief, the rogue waves that keep coming, and the phrase that drives her: memento mori

Alexandra Drane is a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of ARCHANGELS, a women-owned public benefit corporation supporting unpaid caregivers across all 50 states. She previously co-founded Eliza Corporation and Engage with Grace, among other companies.

Inspiring Women is a weekly podcast about advancing women to healthcare leadership and keeping them there. Women make up 70 percent of the healthcare workforce but hold just 20 percent of the C-suite. Each week, Laurie bridges that gap through conversations with the women rewriting healthcare's leadership playbook.

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