Our founding advisor Jeff Walker sat down with the Center for Mental Health Investment for a wide-ranging conversation on the history and future of psychedelic-assisted recovery, and where philanthropy fits into the work of bringing these therapies to the people who need them most.
Read or watch the full interview →
Synopsis
Jeff opens with the long view: plant medicines have been used for healing and rites of passage for thousands of years across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, before being rediscovered by Western science in the late 1950s and pushed underground by the Nixon-era prohibition that effectively halted research for decades.
He walks through the modern revival, early signals around alcohol use, Johns Hopkins' end-of-life and depression studies, MAPS' work on MDMA for PTSD, and Compass and Usona's psilocybin trials, and explains why these molecules matter clinically: they appear to reopen neural learning periods, creating windows in which preparation, therapy, and integration can do the real work of change. As Jeff puts it, the molecules don't change you; they open you up for change.
From there he turns to the system-change question that animates so much of his work: once the FDA approves a molecule, who actually pays for it? Without deliberate intervention, access defaults to those who can afford to pay out of pocket, leaving behind exactly the populations most affected by PTSD, depression, anxiety, addiction, and sexual trauma. Closing that gap means rebuilding reimbursement, training practitioners, and engaging Medicaid state by state.
He describes how the Psychedelic Science Funders Collaborative (PSFC) has grown into a community of roughly 400 funders working as catalysts, not just writing checks, but convening practitioners, supporting indigenous reciprocity, funding set-and-setting research, and standing up the infrastructure the drug companies aren't building themselves.
Where PMHA Alliance fits in
In the interview, Jeff names PMHA Alliance directly as the philanthropic vehicle focused on the access question, "to support bringing it to people who couldn't afford it", and points to co-directors Hanifa Nayo Washington and Dara Menashi as the leaders driving that work.
That is exactly the work our team wakes up to every day: building the evidence base, the implementation models, and the Medicaid pathways that turn an FDA approval into real care for people in public mental-health systems. Jeff has been with us from the start, as a founding advisor, a connector to other funders, and a long-time practitioner of the kind of systems-change strategy this field needs to mature responsibly.
We're grateful for his continued partnership, and for the clarity he brings to a question this movement cannot afford to defer: when these medicines arrive, will they arrive for everyone?
Read the full interview at the Center for Mental Health Investment →