131 – LIVE – How Senator Frist Connects Climate Change to Heart Attacks, Mental Health, and Your Doctor’s Office

HF – Ep 131 – Senator Frist – Video – Final

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Alright, uh, everybody, thank you so much for being here today, uh, at the First Jumpstart Health Summit. Uh, it means a lot to us if you’re, if you’re here, you are a part of our ecosystem and part of our family. And, um, this is, you know, this is not a conference. This is just a get together, uh, just a once a year get together that we hope to do every year.

And, uh, maybe over time that will grow. But we, we really do appreciate you all being here. Uh, my co-founder and partner Vic Gatto, um, he is our Chief Investment Officer. 

Vic: Not sure I deserve that, but Okay. 

Marcus: Uh, and if you’ve, if you’ve not listened to our, our podcast, Vic actually does all the hard work every week we sit down for, and we try to like run through the news of the week and he [00:01:00] does all the news gathering, uh, and I just ask him what’s going on.

So, um, so Vic does all the hard work and I, I appreciate that. But we are really, really thrilled to have Senator Bill Fris here today. Um. Senator Frist is multihyphenate, um, in, in all the best ways. Uh, but we are here specifically to talk about, uh, his current passion and his current endeavor, which is he is the global board chair for the Nature Conservancy.

Um, you know, we’re lucky. We have a beautiful day here in Nashville today. Uh, and the sun is shining. It’s a beautiful day here at Geodis Park. Uh, but we are threading the needle in between. What was a pretty rough day yesterday and what we think is probably gonna be a pretty rough day tomorrow. This time of year is starting to become pretty treacherous for us here, uh, in in Middle Tennessee, um, and all over the world.

This kind of stuff is just becoming seasonal and regular and, and a fact of life. Um, Senator first asked me to join the board of the organization. He started called Nashville Health and, uh, at our board orientation at, [00:02:00] at his, his wonderful home at, at Old Town, uh, the, the Chief Medical Officer for HCA Mike Cuff.

Was a little preoccupied because while we were doing the board orientation, uh, there was a hurricane that was, uh, coming into Florida and HCA hospitals were evacuating. So just like try to wrap your head around hospitals evacuating and all of the things that you have to do to keep people safe. Uh, in that type of setting.

And so anyone who questions whether or not the issues that we’re, uh, facing from a climate perspective impact us in healthcare, uh, they most certainly do. So, uh, with that, Senator Frist, welcome to the Health Further Podcast. 

Senator Frist: Ah, great to be with you. 

Marcus: Thank you. Um, Senator, first of all, like, uh, why did you decide to, to become the board chair?

You, you’re, you’ve got a. Very, very full dance card. Um, you know, you’re doing great with frisk, Cresty Ventures, Nashville Health. Um, you, you take other leadership positions in the community. Um, what, why, why did you decide to take on [00:03:00] this huge responsibility as the global board chair? 

Senator Frist (2): Yeah, mark, it’s a, a great question and, um, I spent 20 years in medicine, uh, fascinating years, fantastic years.

Um. You never wanna say the best years, but, but really fantastic in that you spent your life, your whole life and really every waking hour. Then, um, focused on the patient, focused on an individual, and basically it was with a body of knowledge and a profession. So you took an oath to do no harm to take them, and when they come into the office to sit down and sit down at the same level of them.

Maybe even touch them, uh, clearly touch them in an emotional way that gets reflected in making a diagnosis, putting a treatment plan, being held accountable for that, making their lives better, more fulfilling from an economic standpoint and emotional standpoint, a physical standpoint. [00:04:00] And I did it by doing heart transplants.

And so I was called in the innovation world, uh, at a time when heart transplants were brand new. Lung transplants had never been done ever before. Heart, lungs, we just started at, when I was at Stanford. I started with that because then I did 12 years in the policy world, um, representing Tennessee and then ultimately as, as majority leader the, the country.

Um. Uh, and then all of a sudden thinking in scale, you know, how does one take that, that same caring, focus on the individual and manifest it in a way at scale that has the same impact, same reason, same motivation. Um, I. Um, and there got lucky most things. You know, it’s this luck and, and, and working hard.

Um, uh, for most of these things. There was a, a little virus, hiv aids, that, that we didn’t know what it was. In 1981 when I was a resident, we didn’t know what it was, and then I went to Washington. It was killing about 3 million people, killing 3 million people every year. America didn’t address [00:05:00] that. And being the only doctor in the Senate, which is kind of interesting in a demo Democratic body, the last doctor who had been elected in 1928, and, and I, um, therefore people seem to listen to me a little more.

People say, how do you become majority leader in such a short period of time? I’m not a politician. Um, but I do focus on, on people and the trust end of it. And, and I tell that story because big issues like HIV is I. Which we had, we didn’t have a name for it initially. We didn’t know it was a virus. We, today it still can’t be cured, but we had no treatment for it.

And, and then, you know, what do you do for it? Well, we saw that reverse and it reversed by the American people coming together. So big issues that are seemingly insurmountable, um, with science and hard work and bringing people together, uh, while aligning people. It has to be done at the policy level, working with science.

It could [00:06:00] be, uh, done. And, and so went through that. So I got the, the sort of individual, the motivation is taken to scale in serving in, in the United States Senate. And then when I finished with that, I said, what do you do? What is the next thing that you do? And the first thing he did is started a thing called Score State Collaborative on reform of education K through 12 education.

It was an idea that started with a guy, Brad Smith. At the time who I’d done a lot of other things with now and who’s in Washington now, and he spent a couple years with it, thinking through it. We were gonna write a book. We said that’s not gonna do it. So we started it because so many of our problems start with education today.

Even today, the challenges we have in Washington, so much of it comes back to and ed educated citizenry and that starts early on. Before K through 12 really? But I had to start somewhere. And that’s going today and now it’s a huge foundation and it’s probably one of the best two or three education reform supporting teachers, public schools in the country.

So that’s, [00:07:00] that’s pretty neat. Not because of me, but because we started it. And so that was a big thing. And then, and then, um, the climate change and conservation, um. The world. So most of these issues I get involved with are innovative, creative, like everybody in here, we don’t have an answer to something, but we see a niche.

We wanna fill the niche, we want to take it to scale. So it’s not, not more complicated than that. So the next biggest challenge, and probably the biggest, um, um, is what we’re facing with what you described, unstable weather patterns that are occurring with increasing frequency. And climate change where last year was the hottest day and the human recorded the hottest year in human recorded history.

As was the year before that. The year before that. So the trends are there, the science is, is there and biodiversity loss where species have been cut by 60%. So [00:08:00] evolution depends on this sort of rich mixture of species that we have. So seeing that and then having the sciences to tell us that there are these tipping points that are occurring.

So the World Health Organization. Uh, we believe them or not. Overall, it says it is the single greatest threat to health, uh, human health on the horizon. Simple statement that’s endorsed by the National Academy of Medicine, part of the Old Institute of Medicine, formerly that’s what it was called, part of the National Academy of Sciences.

That is the most elite, smartest group of, of doctors and, and the people who have studied it basically say it the same thing in terms of what is the single greatest concern in terms of human health. Yeah. And humanity, it is climate change. And so then as a scientist you say, well, if that’s the case, what do you do about it?

Now, what’s unique, and then I’ll be quiet, is, is um, uh, is a [00:09:00] very polarized issue, but hiv aids was the same thing when I came to the Senate 1994. It was like, you know, red and blue and progressive and conservative, and. Nobody was talking to anybody about it, but we were able to depolarize that issue, have people come to the table.

And, uh, with that, a Republican president who’d never been to Africa, George Bush at the time, uh, unlikely you would say with a, a disease that had been stigmatized, began working with the Senate. And, uh, uh, we were able to not solve it, but made huge progress. 27 million people are alive today because of that.

That little initiative that started with two page bill in the Senate. Two pages and a president who said, no, let’s bring everybody together around that. So that’s kind of, uh, yeah. And it’s really clear the American people are there on these issues. Our politicians are not. So that’s a challenge and, but it’s not an insurmountable challenge and it impacts every one of us.

So real quickly, last thing is, so what do [00:10:00] I do? Um, as you know, a policymaker, somebody here from Nashville just trying to do their best, no platform at all other than, you know, things they’ve done in the past. And that is to take planetary health. One, health, the health of animals, biodiversity, the climate, um, the hotter days, the unstable weather patterns.

Um. And instead of looking at ’em as distant environmental issues out there, easy to discount. You know, I’ll get through tomorrow without thinking about it and bring it down through the lens, through the focus, through the prism of human health, the individual. That’s where I started. That’s kind of my reason for being, is take that individual and, and make their lives better, more fulfilling.

So. Acute disease are more heart attacks on hot days. Um, um, chronic disease people know the story with asthma and, and pollution coming in vector-borne disease. Uh, my wife has Alpha [00:11:00] Gal Tracy has alpha gal diseases from a little lone star tick that didn’t exist in this area 10 years ago, but with longer seasons.

Hotter days. It exists today, so she can’t eat meat today. Vector-borne diseases, infectious diseases, mental health, explosive. There are more suicides on the hotter days. There’s more crime on hotter days. There’s more anxiety. There are more admissions to the emergency rooms on these hot days Education.

Kids can’t learn at 110 degrees, um, in 105 degrees, there’s more acting out. So the list goes on. So if you put acute disease, chronic disease, mental health, vector born disease, disproportionately impacting populations of of color, I. Older people, younger people. Um, and then as you mentioned, the impact on our health systems today.

Anyway, a long answer. So now I don’t have to say anything else 

Marcus: young. Go home now. Um, so, so what does the Nature Conservancy, I. Do. 

Senator Frist (2): [00:12:00] Yeah. That’s pretty cool. So, so where do you go? Like, all of us wanna be a part of something much bigger than ourselves. I think I, I think, I don’t know if it’s genetic, it’s probably genetic evolutionary.

I don’t know. But we all do. We all do. So, um, it sort of later in life, although I don’t feel it, but later in life, I said I only have like 15 years to, to have an impact. And so I did what all of you do, you make your list, where do you spend your time? And there are a bunch of conservation groups out there.

Um, uh, the Nature Conservancy is the largest conservation and environmental group in the world. It has a state, it has a chapter in every state. We did an event at our house last night with the chief scientist, uh, which is sort of the second reason, but it’s in 77 countries. So size was number one. Number two, it’s science based and it has more scientists at the Nature Conservancy than the next three conservation groups, um, combined.

And I’m a scientist and I believe in [00:13:00] science, and I, science changes every day, but believe in it. And the third thing, it can go to scale. So it can take these ideas. Radner Lake would not be Radner Lake, just you know, it’s a park here. For those of you who are not here, if it weren’t for the Nature Conservancy, it’s been here, or the nature Conservancy’s been around for 75 years.

Since 1978. Here, over 500,000 acres in Tennessee have been conserved coming in. And then it addresses climate change. So overall convening power because of its size. Number two, it’s science based. Number three, it can go to scale and going to scale in 77 countries. So that’s why TNC. 

Marcus: And and why did they choose you?

Senator Frist (2): You know, so I’m Republican, sort of. I work with everybody, and that’s kind of, in those days when I was majority leader, it was because Democrats, Republican, I just work with everybody. I’m a doctor. You know, I, I don’t really, I didn’t get there because I’m biased or have prejudices and all. And I’m, I’m not perfect in that way, and I can be hardcore and I ran the National Republican Senatorial [00:14:00] Committee and I’m competitive, but when it comes down to it, I want people to come to the table.

I’ve depolarized other issues, not, I haven’t depolarized I, in my mind I get a vision of how to depolarize issues. Um, and, and put it on the table. But I don’t, I don’t really know because it’s unusual to have a conservative, I’m a centrist, but a conservative, um, uh, Republican running the largest conservation group in the world.

Uh, that’s unusual. Uh, so I don’t really, that’s not why, that, that’s not why, I mean, you know, you have a board, you get on the board. First I told you why I kind of got on the board and then after that, I don’t know really. Uh. But I got another 18 months at it. I thought I was gonna another six months, but they just extended another 18 months.

Oh, 

Marcus: well they must like what you’re doing. All right. One, one more question from me then I’ll turn it over to Vic. So. I know that you, um, have recently been on the road, uh, with the organization. I saw some pretty cool pictures of you, uh, in [00:15:00] Brazil, uh, at Carnival, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And then also, uh, uh, I tried to 

Senator Frist (2): keep the carnival pictures off in the, no, no, no TNC stuff, people on.

No, no, no. Senator, we wanna see you having fun. 

Marcus: No, no. We saw some pictures of you at Carnival and then also, uh, in, in the Amazon. Um, what, what did you learn on, on that trip and maybe any other trip that, that you’d like to Yeah, yeah, share. 

Senator Frist (2): Um, I’ll try to be brief, but the, um. So on the Amazon that wasn’t, that, that was kinda like six weeks ago.

Yeah, I think so. So, so as chair I do travel the world, uh, uh, Tracy and I, Tracy is sort of my, my wife, who many of you know, is my North star here. I mean, you know, I’ve been in the operating room for 20 years and then, and the senate floor for 12 years and being with constituents and, and I went to state parks when I grew up.

People kind of know the frisk name here in Nashville because of, of HCA and my brother and dad, they’ve been around a while, but growing up we didn’t have money and we went to state parks. It’s the only place I went or oh, [00:16:00] for vacation coming Mountain State Park, you know, for a week. It was really big.

’cause dad used to work a a lot coming in. Um. This connection to sort of the science end of it. I couldn’t make lung lung transplants work. Nobody could. And, and, um, uh, this is kind of the, my own journey there. Heart transplants we could do, and it was miraculous. People were dying. Thousands of people then you could put hearts in and all of a sudden they’d live but couldn’t make a lung transplant work because they couldn’t get the anastomosis to heal.

Take a lung out. Put it down the, the, the airways. You couldn’t get ’em to heal because of immunosuppression. Until two Norwegian doctors, scientists in a soil sample, um, uh, from Norway found a fungus and that fungus. Just a fungus, you know, like they found it and they took it to the lab and saw that you could suppress the immune system, such you didn’t have to use steroids.

Therefore, this anastomosis would heal. They didn’t define it that way, but I saw it [00:17:00] and I said, no. Now all of a sudden I can make a lung transplant work, and this drug became cyclosporine. It’s used for all transplants for about 15 years and that. Connection between nature. The earth’s 4 billion years old we’re only like 300,000 years old as people.

So if you come back and capture nature and it’s biodiversity, and that for me allowed me to do transplants and the oldest lung transplant in the world is when I did lung transplant is alive today, 36 years ago that we did. It’s pretty cool and that she’s alive today, the oldest in the world. Or the longest living, um, because of that fungus coming in.

And so I, I tell that because there’s about 70% of the drugs in cancer today are derived from nature, it, uh, itself. And so this connection between nature and medicine and hope and healing in my mind is so dramatic that I have kind of a responsibility to share that with other people. 

Marcus: So did you [00:18:00] feel good about the future of that when you went to the Amazon?

Um, 

Senator Frist (2): well, the Amazon was interesting and the article I wrote, it’s in Forbes. I I, I published a lot of my stuff on Substack, which I’ve only been on recently. I have an article today that, that, that kind of summarizes some of the things we’re talking about today. Um, uh, in, on Substack and, and in Forbes wrote an article and the whole article is the days that we spend in the Amazon rainforest looking at the trees that ha and the plants that have an had an impact.

Malaria. The treatment from malaria came from a particular tree quinone itself. Um, if you look at aspirin, if anybody takes aspirin, yes, it’s the most common drug in the world. It comes from Willa Barka tree. And so I want to share with people the power of nature and why people like me and others say we have some moral and social, but moral responsibility to do what we can to conserve nature and forest.

You can do things in a sustainable way [00:19:00] at, at, uh, as we go forward. And that’s kind of the message there. 

Vic: Yeah. So, um, I’m really interested in this, uh, new chapter. I don’t know how new it is, but the, I’m learning about it new and that, that dichotomy between the Nature Conservancy, where I think of conserving the, the amazing beautiful nature that we have around us for our grandkids.

And cons contracting that against sort of scientific advancement and progress in finding the next fungus or the next aspirin. In nature for human benefit. And as, as chair of the conservancy, do you sort of stitch those together? Is that now part of the mission? Yeah. Or how 

Senator Frist (2): do you stitch those together maybe?

Yeah. Yeah. So, no, exactly. So I’m, I’m optimistic. Um, most environmentalists are really pessimistic. I think because of the trends, the, the biodiversity, the species lost, the [00:20:00] deforestation. You look at these maps of the, our country and especially Brazil, which I was also doing at the deforestation there, it’s pretty easy to get depressed.

I see the world that everybody here is in the world of innovation, the world of creativity, the world of developing solutions and may not be complete solutions that start small, that can go to scale to solve these so big problems that are just sort of impossible to do. I’ve seen the civil rights sort of movement take these big movements out, and I’ve seen.

It, it used to be that that cars were the big acts, the number one cause of children’s death, and that’s been reversed command. I’ve seen these big movements, uh, change smoking. 48% of all Americans divide this room in half and half of you would be smoking. I. Um, and now it’s gone away. I’ve seen these other big things go, but it’s the innovation, it’s the creativity, it’s the dynamism that comes from [00:21:00] what maybe even seem like small ideas that are exploding.

And so I’m optimistic because the real problem is fossil fuels. It doesn’t mean ban fossil fuels because we depend on ’em. Our growth, our economy depends on them. And with AI and with the, the, the data centers that we have, the demand is gonna go up. So we need. Ev all kinds of fuel that are out there. But we do know the more fossil fuel we have, we’re gonna have more suicides, we’re gonna have more crime.

We’re not gonna be educated as well. We’re gonna have more chronic disease. We’re gonna have more acute disease. And that’s why everybody says if we’re on the certain great, if we stay on the current trend, it is our biggest sort of health challenge that is out there. I’m optimistic because of technology today.

If you look at technology, I’m absolutely convinced that 15 years from now. We got, right now, we’re in trouble. But 15 years from now, with the right innovation, we will have, for example, machines that will pull carbon out of the air and put it somewhere, maybe channel it back into energy, [00:22:00] maybe put it on the ground, maybe put it directly into trees, and that’s called direct carbon capture.

Huge research. Huge amounts of innovation. If you, if you envision the challenge we have, we’re putting this warm blanket around the world, putting emissions, CO2 emissions up there, CO2 emissions, and they’re contributing to this blanket, which has never been there before. And we get, we get hotter. I. Oh, over time, um, Catherine Hayhoe, the chief scientist at, at the, um, at, with us at the Nature Conservancy, um, who, what was with us last night, she’ll describe it as like a big bathtub is sort of the issue that’s hurting our health, making our neighborhoods less healthy, um, affecting us as individuals with a drain coming out.

And the drain is taking all that bad carbon out through our trees. Take about 35% of all that carbon out, uh, of the air itself, net net. So you can, you know, plant more trees, have more biodiversity. And, but in [00:23:00] that bathtub you gotta turn off the spigot ’cause you got all this bad stuff that’s, that’s coming in, uh, all of the emissions themselves.

And by the way, for, for those healthcare. Healthcare is 18% of the economy, but about 10% of the ba the bad emissions. So we’ve got a responsibility, um, uh, coming in there. So we’ve gotta control that. The optimism comes in, in, in both. We’re gonna be able to use more direct carbon capture with the drain, and we’re gonna be able to use less fossil fuels over time, not in the short term because of nuclear, because of small modular reactors today, which are safe, and people are beginning to realize they’re safe because of green hydrogen today.

Which is energy that’s created by other sorts of green elements. It doesn’t cost, uh, anything to do that. And, and because of the other innovation in sustainable fuels, whether it is solar or wind or as I said, hydrogen, we’re gonna get there, but we’re not gonna be there over the next 15 years, which is this call to action for today.

Vic: Well, and I think one of the things that I’m really, um, [00:24:00] inspired by or optimistic about is you’re bringing many more people to the table around biodiversity and conservation. Because it may be that some people, maybe half the group wants to protect Radner Lake and other and other amazing parts of nature for our grandkids.

And then other part, parts of the group wanna really sort of protect nature because there’s all this biodiversity that is gonna lead to the next aspirin, to the next, to the next drug that enables lung transplant. So, so it’s both that you can pull in people, and I’m struck with a lot of our politicians.

I don’t see them as really leaders. They’re more followers. They do a poll and they realize, my constituents want this. I’m gonna go this way. Versus trying to open up the discussion and help them understand it can be both end. Let’s just sort of think about ways to conserve nature. I. That are positive for whichever group you’re a part of?

Senator Frist (2): Yeah, I, I think that’s exactly what it is. That’s why it’s so doable. ’cause we’re gonna have the technology sort of long term and the [00:25:00] innovation, as I said, the creativity. In the meantime, what do we do as we’re seeing more, more disease coming in? For me. Um, I sort of jump into the policy world because I’ve been there before and I know the impact, ultimately my confidence.

’cause I know the American people feel the same way. It’s not being transferred to our politicians today, not at the state level and not at the federal level. But I’m also smart enough to know that the American people, coupled with good science, can change the world. And so it’s trying to get the American people to be able to not think of it as something distant or, or doesn’t affect me.

’cause it does affect you and your children and your grandchildren. So that’s the challenge. The way I do it is I spend time with the Nature Conservancy. Now, you know, I got first Cresty Ventures and I, so I got day jobs too. But this is, you know, I’m not obsessed with it, but it’s a big deal. Uh uh ’cause I think we can have an impact.

So spend time there. And [00:26:00] so I start a new initiative there that Tracy and my wife did. ’cause we, she’s on the state board here called Planetary and Human Health. And I, I’ll link ’em there. Planetary and human health. Planetary health is, is one health. It’s what we’re talking about, diversity loss. It’s climate change, it’s animal health.

It’s, it’s all of that. And human health, which is you, intimacy, personal, why you care and to link the two. So that’s that. Uh, is the planetary help. Uh, on the human health side, what we’ll do is go to Meharry Medical School, which we’ve done, and basically say we’re gonna raise money for a scholarship. And the scholarship is gonna be for somebody who cares about planetary and human health.

Because right now this is not in your medical school curriculum, even though you want it to, to be. So I got planetary in human health. You do a little bit over here with Meharry and hopefully other people will copy that at every medical school around here and in the [00:27:00] big planetary health. You put a specific initiative that uses language like we’re using today and not how the world’s gonna blow up, or you’re bad because you don’t agree with me.

Which won’t bring people to the table. Yeah. Not fear-based. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. And, and I mean, to me it’s common sense, but right now it’s still a really polarized issue. I mean, it’s as polarized as abortion used to be, or hiv aids used to be, or, you know, all the issues that, that over time can change.

Senator, 

Marcus: um. Both Vic and I, uh, owe you a fair amount of what we’re able to do here today. Um, the number of things you’ve done, uh, in our industry, in our community, uh, are are really too many to count, but I do want to thank you for. Uh, coming up with the idea of the Nashville Healthcare Fellows, um, our networks and our ecosystems are so much better and richer because of it.

Um, I won’t go into very specific things by see Eric Larson, you know, in in the audience. And for me, you know, this [00:28:00] is, you know, one, one of my truly great friends and, um, you know, I don’t think I’d even know ’em if it wasn’t for. Nashville Healthcare Fellows. So, uh, I, I wish we had another half hour. We, we have more on the agenda we need to get to, but thank you so much for being here and sharing, uh, your, your passion and and experience with us today.

Senator Frist: Thank you. It’s great to be with you. Thank you all.