Patrick Dempsey calls on NIH to improve ‘wraparound care’ at awards dinner

Actor Patrick Dempsey called on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to offer better holistic care for cancer patients while receiving one of the 2024 George H.W. Bush Points of Light Awards on Wednesday night.  

Dempsey was recognized for his work as founder of the Dempsey Center, which provides personalized and preventative cancer care in Dempsey’s home state of Maine and beyond. It focuses on what Dempsey called “wraparound care,” a form of health care that includes supportive measures such as mental health counseling, acupuncture, nutrition advice and more.  

“This should just be standard care,” he said during his speech. “The National Institutes of Health, I hope one day that they accept this as a standard part of care for cancer, because it is needed. We need our humanity.” 

Dempsey founded the organization in light of his own family’s struggles with the illness. His mother passed away in 2014 after battling ovarian cancer for 17 years.  

In a Thursday morning appearance on NBC’s “Today,” the “Grey’s Anatomy” actor spoke more about the inspiration and goals behind the organization.  

“We do a lot to treat the disease, but we don’t treat the human being,” he said. “We don’t heal the person.”

A rule issued by the Biden administration last month now requires health insurance providers to provide coverage for mental health care and addiction services — the same as any other condition — in an effort to boost accessibility to services more broadly.

But a recent West Health-Gallup Healthcare survey found that nearly three-fourths of U.S. adults feel the government is not doing enough to ensure access to mental health care. Fifty percent of adults said they only slightly trust or do not trust at all that insurance companies would provide adequate access and coverage for mental health care services, according to the survey. 

“There’s so much we can do. There’s so much healing we can do right now,” Dempsey said in his speech Wednesday. “We’re not waiting for something that’s going to happen 10 years down the road. We can change someone’s life right now, today, in this moment.”