Youth Loneliness & Chronic Conditions: The Shared Strength Project

Guest: Esha Mittal, Founder, The Shared Strength Project

Expert Words: Todd May, MD, Vice President & Medical Director, Health Net

Host: Alex Yarijanian

Episode Summary

One in three young people in the U.S. live with a chronic condition, according to the National Library of Medicine — yet almost none of the funding, research, or attention going toward senior loneliness has followed youth loneliness into the room. Esha Mittal knows the gap firsthand. Diagnosed with a chronic condition in the fall of her freshman year of high school, she found that the diagnosis-based support groups meant to help her instead became what she calls "a pity party" — rooms where the illness was the only thing anyone had in common.

In November 2025, Esha launched The Shared Strength Project, a mentorship program that pairs youth and young adults living with chronic conditions with mentors matched by shared interest, not shared diagnosis. The model grew directly out of her own experience at UCSF's Wellness Center for Youth and Young Adults with Chronic Conditions, where a nurse practitioner and social worker treated her as a whole person before they ever discussed her symptoms — and where she met the mentor whose own story became the blueprint for the project.

In this episode, Esha walks through what that first isolating year actually felt like, why interest-based pairing works where diagnosis-based support groups didn't, and how a trauma-informed curriculum — built with a licensed social worker — structures every mentor meeting. We also hear from Todd May, MD, Vice President and Medical Director at Health Net, on why "youth loneliness" as a term hasn't yet made it into payer boardroom conversations — even as youth mental health broadly has.

Esha will be speaking at Behavioral Health Tech 2026 in Nashville (September 22–24, Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center) on a panel about designing tools youth and young adults will actually use.

Timestamps

• 00:00 — Cold open: the funding gap between senior and youth loneliness
• 01:39 — Esha's diagnosis, freshman year of high school
• 03:24 — "They did not get it" — the friend-group disconnect
• 04:56 — Why the first (diagnosis-matched) support group made things worse, not better
• 07:20 — Launching The Shared Strength Project (November 2025) and the interest-based pairing model
• 09:19 — Todd May, MD (Health Net) on why youth loneliness hasn't reached payer conversations yet
• 10:33 — The UCSF Wellness Center partnership and the mentor whose story inspired the project
• 13:20 — Where to find Esha and what she's looking for next
• 13:54 — BHT2026 — Esha's panel on designing tools for youth and young adults

Key Quotes

Esha Mittal, on the diagnosis-matched support group:

"Once we started talking about our chronic condition, it felt like that was all we could talk about. And it just became like a pity party."

Esha Mittal, on the design principle behind The Shared Strength Project:

"I chose to pair people up based on shared interest because... it would have been so valuable for me to understand myself again outside of my illness."

Todd May, MD, on payer awareness of youth loneliness:

"That term hasn't actually come up... The loneliness piece is just not getting a lot of airplay."

Guest-cited statistics (attributed to source)

Per the National Library of Medicine, as cited by Esha Mittal: one in three young people in the U.S. live with a chronic condition, and 20 million American