Catalyst Award: Kelly and Bob Specht and Carl’s Cause

Carl's cause is a 501(c)(3) that our family started back in really 2018 after we lost our wonderful son, Carl Specht, to suicide in June of 2017. The moment after we lost Carl, our family was kind of in a free fall. We really didn't know how we would go on without him.

We just felt like we've got to do something. We wanted to do something positive, and we wanted to help other people not have to go through what we went through.

Bob said, we have to bring mental health awareness to the stadium level.

And so that was kind of the birth of Carl's Cause.

Carl was an incredible athlete, and they wanted to know if there were ways that we could make sure patients who were hospitalized for a period of time had access to athletic equipment, or they could work out.

Mental health services at the hospital are challenging to fund, and so philanthropy has been essential to grow some of these extra resources that make all the difference.

They've turned something that was truly tragic into something that will help a lot of other individuals and families avoid tragedy. I think that's a catalyst.

If you look at what's going on in behavioral health, it used to be one of those conversations you didn't talk about. Now it's become so prevalent, appropriately so, that the need is so vast in our community and across our country.

And getting to sit down with Bob and Kelly, we really just started having conversations what might have saved Carl.

That's when we worked with Jeannie and the group and the fund development, and kind of got a new goal in mind, and eventually started with a plan to fund the Behavioral Health Navigator Program.

Creating the Behavioral Health Navigation Program allowed us to create a program where patients can be identified to be placed on the panel of a navigator who will support them and help make sure that they continue to have the resources they need and the hope to keep going.

My name is Merritt Neil, and I grew up in this area, Leawood, Kansas. My son, Jackson, regular, all-American kid, normal, developmentally. And so we were really thrown for a loop when, at the age of 17, he just seemed to fall into an abyss. We took him to the ER at Kansas Health System, and then he was triaged to Strawberry Hill. My aunt put everything together, really, and said, you know, the behavioral health navigators over there are largely funded by Carl's Cause.

There's people all the time that reach out to us now that would have never thought that they needed us as a resource, or Carl's Cause, or the hospital as a resource for mental health.

Bob does say this all the time that he wishes he didn't have to be here. And I think we feel that too, and we wish we didn't have to work in this way with them, but we feel honored to be able to help remember Carl and all of the good that he's he's still doing.

Our outcome could have been exactly their outcome. We could have lost Jackson, and I think the fact that they channeled their grief in such a powerful way is a testament to their incredible bravery.

I can't imagine how unbelievably hard it is for Bob and Kelly to come and talk at events and share the story, but I know every time they do, they save another life.

I just know that we are so grateful and so appreciative of Bob and Kelly Specht for all they've done for this community and for The University of Kansas Health System.

We are one of the largest providers of behavioral health right here in Kansas City, and we're proud of that work, but our purpose in being in that business is to make sure we're meeting a community need.

I think it is so fitting that Bob and Kelly and the entire Specht family is receiving the Catalyst Award tonight for their incredible commitment in this community to mental and behavioral health.

We were so surprised to get the call about it, and we're proud of what we've been able to accomplish in his memory.

We're really in awe of the honor, but I think it just kind of says you're doing a good job. Keep doing what you're doing, and we want to be part of it.