The mothers of Jonah Hill and Beanie Feldstein, Adam Levine, Sasha and Malia Obama, and Alicia Keys made the cutest PSA encouraging people to get the Covid vaccine.
What do you get when you combine the women who gave us beloved people like Jonah Hill, Beanie Feldstein, Adam Levine, Sasha and Malia Obama, and Alicia Keys? One really bad*ss group of moms dedicated to kids’ wellness. Or, YourMomCares, the organization that started in 2014 when the Obama administration enlisted Sharon Feldstein (Jonah Hill and Beanie Feldstein’s Mom), Patsy Noah (Adam Levine’s Mom), Terria Joseph (Alicia Keys’ mom), and other moms to make an Affordable Care Act PSA encouraging young people to enroll in health insurance.
That original video was star-studded, featuring the aforementioned celeb mothers, as well as Michelle Obama, Guadalupe Rodríguez (Jennifer Lopez’s mom), and others.
After all, who better than these moms to help persuade young people to get vaccinated?
Their newest PSA features these women and more, using every mom-trick in the book to convince kids to get vaccinated. And it’s hilariously effective.
Katie got such a kick out of the video, and being a mom of two young women was moved by this organization’s effort, so she caught up with founder and CEO Sharon Feldstein about the new PSA, youth mental wellness, and more.
KC: What was the original intention of YourMomCares?
The original intention of YourMomCares was (and is) to use the voice of celebrity and influencer moms for all kids’ wellbeing, focusing on their mental health, because mental health is affected by everything else. As you know, the pandemic has had a devastating impact on kids. That’s why we teamed up with The Second City and Made to Save to create this PSA for the vaccine.
How did the PSA come together? How did you get Michelle Obama involved?
YourMomCares, our organization’s name, actually came from a PSA we did for the Obama administration and the Affordable Healthcare Act. I was contacted about participating and brought my long-time friend Patsy Noah (Adam Levine’s mom) to the project, and doing that PSA is how we met Terria Joseph (Alicia Keys’ mom). That first PSA ended with Michelle Obama saying “we nag you because we love you, your mom cares.” My background is in branding, trends, and management so I immediately recognized the power of that name and the sentiment. I got permission from the White House to take the name and trademark it with the promise that I would use it to help kids. Fast forward to the pandemic and the need to have people trust science and get vaccinated, I called my old buddy Brad Jenkins (from the Obama White House, he now owns a production company, Enfranchisement) and pitched the idea of the moms doing a “sequel” or “season 2,” if you will, of YourMomCares to promote vaccinations. Enfranchisement, along with The Second City and I cast, wrote, and produced the PSA. We all knew that it would be an honor and really impactful to have Michelle Obama once again be the closer for such an important cause, so we asked her team and she graciously agreed.
What do you want viewers to take away from it? What have the responses been like?
I’d love viewers to take away that we are six moms with very different opinions, belief systems, and ways we move through the world, even when it comes to something like medicine, but we ALL agreed that we trust the science and we are so grateful to be able to live in a place where we can get vaccinated and boosted to stay as safe as possible. So, the takeaway? Please get vaccinated and boosted.
The response has been massive, the PSA was immediately featured on CBS Mornings with Gayle King, Oprah Daily, and People Magazine, and shared by Michelle Obama, the Obama Foundation, and more. We were told this is one of the most successful vaccination PSAs to date. People are responding to us because we are moms using our sense of humor, guilt, power, intelligence, and mom-experience, everything in the “mom book” (LOL!), to get people to listen.
What kind of impact have you seen the organization have since its inception?
YourMomCares has successfully created and supported some of the most groundbreaking research and programs in kids’ mental health over the past three years. Our star achievement is a major study we fully funded at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) of a pediatrician-prescribed digital behavioral health tool, RxWell, to reduce anxiety and depression in adolescents. The results from Phase 1 are incredible and will soon be published in a leading medical journal. We also developed the first-ever group therapy program for youth experiencing homelessness on Skid Row in Los Angeles, California. Our kids’ mental health resources are viewed by hundreds of thousands of people annually and we know that our work is helping to reduce the stigma around mental health and change the dialogue from mental illness to mental wellness.
Finally, to all the kids out there…get vaccinated, get boosted and we’ll tell your mother to leave you alone…for now!
