Mindy Grossman WW International CEO and Dr. Patrice Harris the President of the American Medical Association join Yahoo's Reset Your Mindset at Work special

Mindy Grossman, WW International CEO, and Dr. Patrice Harris, the President of the American Medical Association, join Yahoo Finance's Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer for Yahoo's Reset Your Mindset at Work special.

Video Transcript

ANDY SERWER: Welcome back to "Reset your Mindset. I'm Andy Serwer, editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance. I want to bring in our next two guests, Mindy Grossman, the CEO of WW International, and Dr. Patrice Harris, who is the president of the American Medical Association. Welcome to both of you.

PATRICE HARRIS: Well, thank you for having me.

MINDY GROSSMAN: Thank you. Great to see you.

ANDY SERWER: Good to see you guys, as well. So I want to start with Dr. Harris and ask you, you're a psychiatrist. And just sort of ask you, generally speaking, what is going on with the mental health of Americans through this crisis?

PATRICE HARRIS: Well, let's set a little bit before this crisis. We were having an increase of adolescents and adults who were experiencing anxiety. I have seen an increase in, unfortunately, the number of suicides and suicide attempts in adolescents. So that was pre-COVID, and now we have this crisis which actually makes us all anxious and worried and fearful.

And so we have now a crisis on top of a crisis, and we are seeing, in addition to those feelings, people have to be, in order for us to be safe, isolating. And we're seeing increased feelings of loneliness. So with this current pandemic, we are seeing increased anxiety, feelings of loneliness and isolation that were already on top of pre-COVID crisis.

ANDY SERWER: And Mindy, over to you, I want to ask you how you've shifted the priorities of WW International during this time, and how are you looking to serve the wellness needs of your members during this pandemic?

MINDY GROSSMAN: Yes, Andy, we were-- we have been in the process of a transformation of the business over the last number of years, on one hand, to not just be the leader in weight loss, but to have an entire holistic approach to support people in health and wellness, and in addition, accelerate our digital transformation. And when we identified what was happening with COVID, we made a very quick pivot because we had to pause all of our physical studios around the world, where we had 30,000 workshops a week, to support the safety and security of both our employees and our members.

And we pivoted the product tech team, and in six days, we trained 14,000 coaches and guides, and simultaneously, in 12 countries, launched all those workshops virtually. And we've been supporting that throughout this whole time. And as you were hearing from Dr. Harris, one of the things that was so important to us was ensuring that not only could we support the safety and security, but that we could keep the community together for motivation and support in a time of isolation.

What that has done is further accelerate our digital strategy. Before this time, we were already planning to launch later in the year a whole new vertical of the company around digital, which is about 5 million of our members. Well, we're all digital. About 25% also went to the studios. But with personal and group coaching. And that is still on track. And what we're seeing, because we do see behavior in real time, imagine 5 million people tracking every day their food, their activity. They're talking on our social channels, and we're monitoring the conversations in our virtual workshops.

ANDY SERWER: Right.

MINDY GROSSMAN: And this idea of needing support, feeling vulnerable, but there's been a really big pivot recently to significant conversations around health and wellness and priorities and reassessment of life.

ANDY SERWER: Right. I want to jump in there, Mindy, and ask Dr. Harris about what individuals can do to make themselves healthier mentally being home, and also what can companies do, Dr. Harris, to help out their employees, as well?

PATRICE HARRIS: So you heard me talk about worry and fear and action, but I think, overall, we are a resilient country, right? And what we can do is channel that worry, those fears into action. And I always say individual actions can make collective impact. So the most important thing I think, individually, is to make sure we are practicing self-care. Mindy talked about wellness. And so first of all, we have to give ourselves grace to feel the feelings that we're feeling, the fear and the worry. Don't beat ourselves up. We don't have to be perfect parents.

You know, we don't have to have these expectations of doing it all, because we're all learning as we're growing here. We can make sure we're sleeping as best we can. We can make sure were eating as healthily as we can, although again, give ourselves grace. We can move, we can exercise. And again, I've said, you know, not everyone has the privilege-- we need to make sure we have privilege conversations-- of going outside, even, or having a safe neighborhood. But I always say, even in your own home, you can put on your favorite record and dance. And so we can do that individually.

And I'm gonna just make one more point about action and channeling that worry into action. There will be a new normal, as people always say, and we will need to make sure that our services and support for mental health needs are ready. And so right now, we need to be preparing, and businesses need to be preparing as to what they can do to support their employees when we get, or as we are getting to the new normal.

ANDY SERWER: All right, lots more to talk about here, but unfortunately, we've got to wrap. So Dr. Patrice Harris and Mindy Grossman, thank you both so much for taking the time to talk to us today.

MINDY GROSSMAN: Always great to see you.

PATRICE HARRIS: Same here. Thanks for having us.