Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Live Event/Special
Champions For Change. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired September 13, 2025 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
ROY WOOD JR., CNN HOST: Here are a few more stories we're watching. You're going to like the way you look. I guarantee it. You call this soup? I'm Roy Wood Jr. And I'll see you next week for another episode of Have I Got News for You. And we still haven't seen all the Epstein files. See you next week.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: In today's world, it can sometimes be easy to miss the positive stories happening around us. But trust me, they're out there. And tonight you're going to get to know several truly remarkable people who are making life better. They're all changing the world. And you get to learn how and why.
GUPTA (voice-over): My champion is a doctor whose personal health battles led him to tap into a new vein of treatments.
DR. DAVID FAJGENBAUM, CO-FOUNDER & PRESIDENT, EVERY CURE: How many hidden cures are just sitting in there that we're using them for this disease or that disease, but they can also be used for that disease and that disease.
GUPTA: Gives me goosebumps.
GUPTA (voice-over): Boris Sanchez catches up with a Cuban American man whose heritage inspired him to brew up opportunities and support for migrants.
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: You hire a lot of Cuban migrants.
ADAM SAN MIGUEL, CEO, CORTADITOS: ADAM SAN MIGUEL, CEO, CORTADITOS: We are very purposeful about it. So I always tell them, I want you to have a career with us or a career without us.
GUPTA (voice-over): Abby Phillips bonds with a doula who is delivering much needed maternal care to pregnant women and new mothers in underserved communities. MYLA FLORES, FOUNDER, THE BIRTHING PLACE FOUNDATION: One of the things I noticed about being a doula in the Bronx was that people didn't have access to the kind of care that they wanted.
GUPTA (voice-over): Bill Weir learns how one mom is driving school buses into the future.
RITU NARAYAN, FOUNDER & CEO, ZUM: You can track your pizza, you can track your packages, but you have no idea where your children love. GUPTA (voice-over): Dana Bash examines how a woman is expanding access to mental health support and housing for those in need.
ANN CHAUVIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WOODLEY HOUSE: There's just too many people who really need the kind of loving environments that we can provide. GUPTA (voice-over): Erin Burnett explores how her champion is preserving farmland so future generations can reap the benefits.
KARA HARTIGAN WHELAN, PRESIDENT, WESTCHESTER LAND TRUST: We need land to grow food on. It's just that simple. If we don't have these farms, we won't have that local food. GUPTA (voice-over): Anderson Cooper discovers how one man is bringing lifesaving nutrition to children in desperate need.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: How many kids have you saved, do you think?
MARK MOORE, CEO AND CO-FOUNDER, MANA NUTRITION: At least 10 million if you look at the production numbers.
COOPER: Ten million.
GUPTA (voice-over): And Laura Coates joins a jazz vocalist who is making sure everyone can enjoy the benefits and experience the joy of the music she loves.
MELISSA WALKER, FOUNDER, JAZZ HOUSE KIDS: We allow far too many young people to not have access to the very things that would unlock their greatness.
GUPTA (voice-over): These men and women have found their calling and making a difference. This is Champions for Change.
GUPTA: Welcome to Champions for change. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Over the next hour, we introduce you to eight inspiring people who are right now improving lives. Maybe your life or someone you know. Now pay attention, because each champion also shares a personal connection with a CNN journalist like mine, a fellow doctor whose inventive approach to treatment is saving lives.
First, CNN anchor Boris Sanchez. He's a proud Cuban American, a bond he shares with a New Jersey man who's using his cafe to help migrants, support students and promote Cuban culture. The result is a special blend of coffee and community.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ADAM SAN MIGUEL, CEO, CORTADITOS: I would equate the Cuban culture to the coffee, which has elements of joy.
The strength and perseverance and resilience, just like the coffee, is very strong. And they're very passionate people about what they care about. I'm very proud of Cortaditos, a five-store, going to be six- soon, Cuban coffee shop chain. We're building careers and pathways to resettling and growing in this country, and to support specifically Cuban-American students.
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: I am a Cuban-American immigrant, and my family came to the United States the day that I turned 3. I feel very connected to Adam in part because of our shared background and the idea that our families fled our homeland in order to create a new life.
Coming to Cortaditos feels like a slice of home. It feels like I'm back in Miami sharing cafecito and talking about the events of the day.
You hire a lot of Cuban migrants.
[22:05:00]
SAN MIGUEL: We are very purposeful about it. So we work with refugee resettlement agencies, and we go specifically to their job fairs, and we recruit. And so I always tell them, I want you to have a career with us or a career without us, and we're going to help you get there.
IVONNE BENITEZ, CORTADITOS MANAGER (through translator): As a young girl, I always wanted to leave Cuba. I came to achieve a dream, to be a professional.
SANCHEZ (through translator): What would be your goal now for yourself?
BENITEZ (through translator): My first goal is to learn English and improve myself a little more, because I really would like to know a little more about business.
SANCHEZ: It can be extremely intimidating as a new arrival in the United States to try to carve a path for yourself and your family, especially if you don't speak English. What Adam is doing at Cortaditos is giving an express lane to these folks to assimilate and to pursue their dreams.
LIZ FIS, CORTADITOS BARISTA: I was born in Havana, Cuba, and I immigrated to the United States when I was 8 years old. I absolutely love working at Cortaditos. I get to work with other Cubans whom I can identify with. And the chemistry is just there because we get each other.
SANCHEZ: Something that Adam and I share, and certainly other Cuban Americans and immigrants across this country, is that, from a very early age, our parents instilled us with the idea that you have to work hard, you have to study.
Adam has not only made good on the American dream for himself and for his family. He's now turned around and offered a helping hand to the next generation.
SAN MIGUEL: When I say welcome, you say, CAALE. Welcome.
CROWD: CAALE.
SAN MIGUEL: I founded CAALE in 2013, the Cuban American Alliance for Leadership and Education.
Our mission is to build leadership capacity in the next generation of Cuban-American leaders. We give out three $10,000 scholarships a year, and the goal of the program is to build a professional, one that is successful in their career, has a spirit of service, and they know and care about their cultural identity, which is Cuba.
FIS: I am proud to be a scholarship recipient and to work at Cortaditos. CAALE has been such a resource. It's helped me find out what career I want to continue in so that I know what options I can have for my future.
SAN MIGUEL: My grandfather always marveled at how big and how great this country was, and he always knew the opportunity was there. If he would have saw, you know --
SANCHEZ: Of course.
SAN MIGUEL: -- not just what I have accomplished, because I don't think owning a coffee shop is so special, but I know he would be very, very proud of how I did it. He would be proud because I did it helping people.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GUPTA: I told you, so touching. As you just saw, communities can be an important source of support and identity. But marginalized groups, they often face increased challenges. For instance, black women have the highest maternal mortality rates in the country, and that is regardless of socioeconomic status. Think about that. For CNN anchor, Abby Phillip, this issue is personal. And it led her to the Bronx, where one woman is going the extra mile to bring free health care to pregnant women and new mothers in need.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Part of like my anxiety when I was pregnant was that there was no birth center that was close by.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: I didn't realize how much support I would need with breastfeeding after.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's nice having a space to be able to let go.
MYLA FLORES, FOUNDER, THE BIRTHING PLACE FOUNDATION: One of the things I noticed about being a doula in the Bronx was that people didn't have access to the kind of care that they wanted.
PHILLIP: Myla Flores's journey to becoming a doula started when she was just 12 years old. Her teenage sister was pregnant, and they were so close that she was there for every step of the way.
FLORES: I was involved in the pregnancy, the labor. I had no idea at the time that great care was rare.
PHILLIP: Myla saw firsthand the disparities that play out all across the country. In the Bronx, the maternal mortality rates are significantly higher than they are in the rest of the United States. And so, she started The Birthing Place.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When I started coming here, it felt like I was getting personalized care and it was more like holistic.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I felt really grateful for the services here because it made it accessible.
FLORES: We're creating a mini version of a birth center. So, our clinic offers all of the services, just short of being able to catch babies and have people stay for a period after they've given birth. So, I just place my palms here.
Hold that for the whole length of the contraction.
PHILLIP: When you train doulas to provide culturally responsive care, how does that change the experience of childbirth for your community?
[22:10:00]
FLORES: It really helps people feel more seen and heard and connected.
PHILLIP: This is like a workout.
FLORES: There are statistics that show that culturally-aligned care as well as access to midwives and doulas help reduce mortalities and morbidities and unnecessary interventions.
It feels good even not pregnant, right?
PHILLIP: It feels so good.
I'm inspired by the work that Myla is doing because having a doula changed my childbirth experience. When I was pregnant with my daughter, that was the first time I learned that many black and brown women were choosing that option to find safer, more supported birth options.
STEPHANIE VIDAL, NEW MOM: I think that women in the Bronx don't get the care that they deserve because it's expected that you will just take what you get, and that's it. You have no options.
FLORES: Hi.
VIDAL: Going to The Birthing Place for my prenatal care, I felt like I was being seen by people who look like me.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm just going to check your blood pressure really quick, OK.
VIDAL: Everybody needs a Myla. She's family forever.
PHILLIP (voice-over): They're also taking this wraparound care into the community using the Wombus.
FLORES: We're going to come in here and get some care.
FLORES: We're able to have outreach opportunities where the doulas in the community can connect with the people seeking a range of support.
PHILLIP: You have big dreams for a birth center. What does the birth center look like for The Birthing Place?
FLORES: I want families to step into our future birth center and feel a sense of home, comfort, no judgment. All people deserve access to this kind of care.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GUPTA: Like Myla, many of the champions you're going to meet tonight have deeply personal motivations for their work. And up next --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: How did you come into this work?
ANN CHAUVIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WOODLEY HOUSE: Growing up, my Uncle Jack had a very significant mental illness, and I always connected with him. And so I knew from when I was just a little kid that I needed to work in mental health.
Ready for a pizza party?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GUPTA: How family ties led one woman to dedicate her life to supporting people with mental health challenges.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:16:19]
GUPTA: It is estimated that more than one in five American adults live with mental illness. Too many of them never get any help, never. It could be stigma, lack of resources, something else entirely. CNN anchor and chief political correspondent, Dana Bash, introduces us to a woman who makes sure people with mental health issues get the assistance and the homes that they need.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mental illness can be very isolating because you feel so alone and helpless.
CHAUVIN: Woodley House provides housing and support services to people with mental health disorders. You're surrounded by people who understand what you're going through and treat you with dignity.
BASH: Tell me about the history here. Back when it started, it was revolutionary.
CHAUVIN: So in 1958, places like Woodley House did not exist. People were institutionalized. And Joan Doniger, who's working at the city's psychiatric hospital, and she noticed that there were so many people that were well enough to leave, but they had nowhere to go. So this group home was the first of its kind on the East Coast.
BASH (voice-over): Today, Woodley House owns more than 10 properties in Washington, D.C. that offer varying levels of support. Ann Chauvin worked here early in her career and returned to run the organization nearly eight years ago.
CHAUVIN: It was actually when I worked at Woodley House in the 90s that I saw how critical this work is.
BASH: How did you come into this work?
CHAUVIN: Growing up, my Uncle Jack had a very significant mental illness, and I always connected with him. And so I knew from when I was just a little kid that I needed to work in mental health. And later, he went into a group home, and he was so happy. Every person that comes into Woodley House, I think of my Uncle Jack.
Wow.
BASH (voice-over): Determined to help even more people, Ann is now leading Woodley House into a new era.
CHAUVIN: We had been serving about 300 people per year for decades. We needed to do more. In 2024, we served 497 people.
BASH: Wow.
CHAUVIN: I'll hug you anytime.
There's just too many people who really need the kind of loving environments that we can provide.
BASH: I've been involved with the Woodley House for like 15 years, and I, like so many people, have close family members who have really struggled with mental health challenges. They just need somebody to reach out their hand and say, I got you.
Reginald was an engineer at the top of his professional game, and then he fell.
REGINALD BODDIE, WOODLEY HOUSE RESIDENT: I was drinking and driving on a rainy night and lost control of the car. And I was hospitalized for like 18 months. And I no longer have a career.
I went through a great state of depression. I needed more help than I could give myself. And I was introduced to Woodley House.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And what about your psych appointment? How did that go?
BODDIE: Went well. Well, I'm still sane, yes.
That's when the support came. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Good afternoon, everyone.
BODDIE: At first, I would just observe. And then some of the stories started to sound familiar.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ever since the implosion of my life, I'll start to shut down at a certain point.
BODDIE: I could be more open and more truthful.
There's always more I could be doing, you know.
They gave me the recipe. I'm doing -- I'm doing the cooking, you know.
BASH: I was talking to Ann. One of her big goals has been for people to feel like they are home.
[22:20:01]
BODDIE: Right.
BASH: Do you feel that way?
BODDIE: I definitely feel that way. I feel like I'm about to leave home because now I'm going on to the next level, to my independent housing.
CHAUVIN: Well, is it a one bedroom? Is it a studio?
BODDIE: Yes, it's -- no, it's a one bedroom.
CHAUVIN: We were sad. We know we're going to miss him. But mostly just super happy and excited.
Our hope for our residents is that they could live happy, productive lives.
BASH: So it's not about surviving, it's thriving.
CHAUVIN: Thriving.
BASH: And you see that.
CHAUVIN: We see it every day.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GUPTA: Up next, you'll meet two champions for change who are protecting the one thing we all share in common, our home, the planet. Erin Burnett joins a woman preserving both farms and forests right here in New York.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KARA HARTIGAN WHELAN, PRESIDENT, WESTCHESTER LAND TRUST: I made a commitment that I would spend the rest of my life trying to protect natural areas that other people could benefit from and experience. The land that we protect safeguards our communities.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GUPTA: And on the other side of the country in California, Bill Weir meets a mom who found a green solution in yellow school buses.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:24:58]
GUPTA: Every day in the United states, an estimated 6,000 acres of open space are lost. Why? Well, they're converted to housing and shopping and other things. Now, as you might imagine, we pay a price for this, our plants, our water, our ability to just get out into nature. CNN anchor, Erin Burnett, introduces us to a woman protecting these resources and helping people nurture everything the land has to offer.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have three squashes.
ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: Wait, can you do this pepper too? Oh, your hands are so full. What's your name?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Max.
BURNETT: Max, OK. Do you know how to harvest this? She was showing me. I don't know how. You want, oh, you do twist it. OK.
BURNETT (voice-over): Max is learning to grow real food in real dirt.
BURNETT: Almost got it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There you go. Good job.
BURNETT: Awesome, Max.
BURNETT (voice-over): Something rare in America today.
BURNETT: What are these? Do you know what you're watering? Collard greens. Those are delicious.
BURNETT (voice-over): Kara Hartigan Whelan leads the Westchester Land Trust.
WHELAN: Westchester Land Trust is one of the 1,300 land trusts in the country. Together we protect more than 60 million acres of land.
BURNETT: Sixty million? WHELAN: Yes.
BURNETT: Wow.
BURNETT (voice-over): She's turning conservation into a fight for healthy food and stronger kids.
WHELAN: I think children like to have ownership and they like to have a say. And so if you invite them into the work early, there's a lot of buy in that you may not see otherwise.
BURNETT (voice-over): Kara has literally helped hundreds of kids get their very first taste healthy food.
WHELAN: I made a commitment that I would spend the rest of my life trying to protect natural areas that other people could benefit from and experience the land that we protect safeguards our communities.
BURNETT (voice-over): Like Stuart's Fruit Farm, family run since 1828.
BOB STUART, STUART'S FRUIT FARM: My dad's been approached since the 50s about selling the place, big corporations to small developers. And I said, no, we're not going to sell.
BURNETT (voice-over): Kara fought for 10 years to save it.
BETSY STUART, STUART'S FRUIT FARM: One man gave me a proposition. He said, oh, you've got two days to look it over. And I said to him, let me look at it. I took it and ripped it right in front of his face. I said, I need two days. I only needed two seconds.
BOB STUART: My dad passed it on to me, and we're going to pass it on to the next generation.
BURNETT: Farms like this are becoming increasingly rare. It is really hard for them to survive.
BOB STUART: Mother Nature can be good and it can be cruel. Two years ago, it rained every weekend, which hurt business, but cut it down about 40 percent. We had $100 left in our savings.
BETSY STUART: But we made it.
BOB STUART: We got -- we got through.
BURNETT: What happens when something like that is lost? Suddenly it becomes a development.
WHELAN: Just across the street from Stuart's, actually, there is a development, so a farm was developed fully. And so you can actually see what happens. I visited Stuart's as a child in school. And to see that farm finally permanently protected. Words can't describe how meaningful it is.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, how you doing?
BURNETT: How you feeling?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good.
BURNETT (voice-over): For me, this is personal. My dad spent decades protecting farmland in Maryland, including our own.
BURNETT: Like the fence?
This is where I had one of the schools in my imaginary town. This was the school.
Your mommy used to cut the grass.
Actually recently asked my dad why he did that. He said it just felt good that the place that I love is never going to change. It can never be turned into a development. It was that love of land that my father had that has always inspired me and given me an appreciation for what conservation can do.
Your need is increasing right now, but the funding has gone down. I mean, as part of all of the cuts in Washington and the things that are happening. I mean, how significant has the cuts been for you?
WHELAN: It's put pressure on our other fundraising sources and it's also just led to just an unknowing that leads to anxiety and just trying to figure out when we're going to need to replace the fence.
BURNETT: What do you want people to know to sort of understand about the connection between eating healthier food and preserving the land, land conservation?
WHELAN: We need land to grow food on. It's just that simple. If we don't have these farms, we won't have that local food.
BURNETT: You grow your own tomatoes?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, but not this year. Our garden got destroyed by mint. The mint took over the garden.
BURNETT: Oh, the mint.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GUPTA: There are many ways to defend the planet. And one critical approach is to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. CNN's chief climate correspondent, Bill Weir, joins an entrepreneur making the nation's largest mass transit system more ecofriendly.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For 100 years, the wheels on the bus have gone round and round, round and round, with very little improvement. Yellow diesel dinosaurs belching fumes all through the town and with no way to track America's most precious cargo.
[22:30:10]
RITU NARAYAN, FOUNDER & CEO, ZUM: Like you can track your pizza. You can track your packages, but you have no idea where your children are.
WEIR: My champion for change is a mom/engineer who set out to reinvent the school bus. It's a company called Zum.
WEIR (voice-over): When Ritu Narayan moved to Silicon Valley and started a family, she found the same child transport challenges her mother faced back in India.
NARAYAN: Nothing had changed. This problem is generational. It is very much societal. Why is the technology not applied and how I can revolutionize this whole thing?
WEIR: Even in the epicenter of door to door on time delivery, we didn't think in this way when it came to our kids.
NARAYAN: Yeah, it is a problem hidden in plain sight, like nobody realizes it's the largest mass transit system in the country, 27 million kids commute twice daily on this infrastructure.
WEIR: Hi, Mateo. I love your shirt. I love that dragon shirt. That's so cool.
WEIR (voice-over): And for special needs families like Mateo's, knowing exactly when a safe, quiet ride will arrive at both ends is an educational game changer.
LIZBETH ZAMORA, MATEO'S MOM: Sometimes they'll tell you like it's coming a little early or it's running late, but right now, it's still on schedule.
WEIR: That's so great, and our driver is Diana.
ZAMORA: Yes. So it gives you the driver's information.
Ready? Have a good day. Bye, Mateo.
WEIR: So he rode a diesel bus, right, his first year?
ZAMORA: Right.
WEIR: What was that like for him? He has autism.
ZAMORA: Right. So, it was a little uncomfortable because he -- the noise. So, he was just sometimes, like, cover his ears, you know? It bothered him. Now, with these buses, like, you can barely hear him. So that's not an issue anymore.
WEIR (voice-over): Oakland became Zum's first big customer, thanks to Kimberly Raney, who came from package delivery at FedEx.
KIMBERLY RANEY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF TRANSPORTATION, OAKLAND UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT: We gave them a little bit of a shot. We also tried them on our most difficult students to see really how well the app and the technology held up.
And it was great. Our parents loved it. We like to call it like Uber, Lyft meets FedEx type, Amazon meets Tesla, and we've merged them all together into almost the exact perfect operation.
NARAYAN: Normally, school buses stop for three minutes every stop. And the reason for that is they want to make sure the kid is there and nobody has missed each other. In our case, we are able to reduce that boarding time to eight seconds per stop.
WEIR: Wow. By trying to solve one problem, she ended up solving all kinds of other problems.
WEIR (voice-over): Since there is a national shortage of bus drivers, smarter routes make the most of everybody. And the extra juice saved gets used after school because these aren't just busses, they are giant portable batteries which get plugged into the grid after school and during summers.
NARAYAN: Seventy-four buses in Oakland are giving 2.1 gigawatt hours of energy, which is equivalent to powering 400 homes annually.
Zum is in 14 states, 4,000 schools across the country, and we are rapidly growing. So, our mission is to enable 10,000 buses in the next few years.
WEIR: School bus by day, power plant by night.
NARAYAN: That's right. That's right.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GUPTA: Finding solutions to old problems often involve developing new technologies. Well, after the break, you're going to meet my champion for change, a doctor who is finding innovative uses for therapies that already exist.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DR. DAVID FAJGENBAUM, CO-FOUNDER & PRESIDENT, EVERY CURE: I have never been able to walk past a CVS since then without just thinking to myself, how many hidden cures are just sitting in there that we're using them for this disease or that disease, but they can also be used for that disease and that disease.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[22:33:57]
GUPTA: And later, Anderson Cooper explores how his champion is trying to nourish the world's most vulnerable.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GUPTA: Welcome back to Champions for Change. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Developing new treatments for diseases is an expensive and time- consuming process. Time that some patients just don't have. My champion for change was one of those patients. But he was also a medical student who used his knowledge to not only discover a life- saving solution for his own disease, but also to carve a critical new pathway to save others. Welcome to the world of repurposed drugs.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FAJGENBAUM: When I got the phone call from my dad saying, David, your mom has brain cancer, that just changed everything for me, Sanjay. I'd made a promise to her just before she passed where I said, mom, I'm going to dedicate the rest of my life trying to find treatments for people like you.
And then in my third year of med school here at Penn, I just got critically ill and everything changed. The doctors told my family I wasn't going to make it. My family said their goodbyes to me. A priest came into my room and read me my last rites.
I had so many things that I wanted to do in my life that I wasn't going to be able to do. I had this amazing girlfriend, Caitlin, that I wanted to have a family with one day. The diagnosis came back, Castleman disease.
They started me on chemotherapy right away because there were no approved treatments and they just wanted to try something.
GUPTA: So David Fajgenbaum decided to look at his own blood samples, his own lymph nodes, as sort of a Hail Mary, trying to find a clue and hopefully find a treatment that everyone else had missed.
D. FAJGENBAUM: These are actually a couple slides from these early experiments I did. This is a typical lymph node. We saw that it's a brown means that the pathway is turned on. And as you see, there are cells that stain brown.
But then we stain my lymph nodes. Wow. This result really stood out to me, and exactly I thought, OK, if this thing is so turned on, I know to turn it off because the drug sirolimus is really good at turning it off.
GUPTA: Sirolimus is a drug that's actually been around for decades, primarily used to treat transplant patients. For David, it worked. It helped tamp down his immune system, treat his Castleman's and only cost him about $20 a month.
[22:40:10]
You saved your own life. What point did you say, hey, look, I need to widen the mission?
D. FAJGENBAUM: Sanjay, I've never been able to walk past a CVS since then without just thinking to myself, how many hidden cures are just sitting in there that we're using them for this disease or that disease, but they can also be used for that disease and that disease. It gives me goosebumps. In 2016, my uncle Michael was diagnosed with metastatic angiosarcoma. I went with Michael to see his oncologist and I started asking questions. Well, could we, you know, think about existing medicines that could be repurposed? And the doctor said, David, no one with angiosarcoma responds to these medicines.
DR. MICHAEL FAJGENBAUM, ANGIOSARCOMA PATIENT: So I then went back to my doctor in Raleigh. I asked if he would send tissue for this advanced DNA testing. I was convinced because of David that this was the right course to follow.
He finally sent tissue off and it turned out that I was exact match for a drug that was already in existence. Here I sit nine years later.
D. FAJGENBAUM: In Michael's story, that for me was this incredible moment to think, wait a minute, are there breadcrumbs out there for other diseases too?
GUPTA: In some ways, this is a little bit of an indictment of the existing medical system. Like how did they not find a $20 a month drug that you could take orally that has saved your life now for over a decade?
D. FAJGENBAUM: You know, drug companies pursue single drugs for a few diseases and then the drug becomes generic and they move on. There's never really been the kind of computational power to really look across 18,000 diseases and about 4,000 drugs.
GUPTA: David is trying to change those numbers. So far, him and his team at Every Cure, they have repurposed 14 drugs offering hope for diseases that previously didn't have a lot of hope.
David is a champion for change. He not only saved his own life, but he's now using what he learned to save many more lives.
You're doing well today?
D. FAJGENBAUM: I'm doing well, yes.
GUPTA: I mean, are you physically 100 percent?
D. FAJGENBAUM: I'm 100 percent. It's been 11.5 years. Today also happens to be my sweet daughter's seventh birthday. I mean, Sanjay, I'm not supposed to be here.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GUPTA: Like David, all of our champions are driven by a desire to help others. When we come back --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: How many kids have you saved, do you think?
MARK MOORE, CEO AND CO-FOUNDER, MANA NUTRITION: At least 10 million, if you look at the production numbers.
COOPER: Ten million.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GUPTA: Anderson Cooper meets a man fighting to end a global crisis.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:47:07]
GUPTA: Consider this. Nearly half the deaths of young children worldwide are caused by a lack of adequate nutrition. Look, we have a lot of big problems in the world, but I've always said that feeding hungry children should not be one of them. And that is why our next champion is making such a huge difference for children in need. Here's CNN anchor, Anderson Cooper, with the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER (voice-over): Mark Moore's company MANA Nutrition helped save the lives of malnourished and starving children around the world. MANA Nutrition makes what's called ready-to-use therapeutic food or UTF for short. It's made with peanut butter, powdered milk, sugar and vitamins, a simple recipe that's revolutionary the fight against hunger. It can bring severely malnourished kids back from the brink of death. Mark's factories in rural Georgia, but he began working in Africa decades ago.
COOPER: When was the first time you went to Africa?
MOORE: I went in the late 80s and I was a college kid.
COOPER: What was it about Africa that changed you?
MOORE: I grew up in Flint thinking I was a poor kid, but then you go to Nairobi and you realize, you know, I was born on third base and that powerful experience just gets in your blood. COOPER (voice-over): Nearly 20 years ago, Mark was an Africa specialist in the U.S. Senate when he saw a report I did on this miraculous treatment that was saving kids lives. Back then it was made by just one French company. Their product was called Plumpy'Nut. They'd stopped eating and become listless and weak, so weak that when their mothers brought them to get Plumpy'Nut the nurse put them in a van and sent them straight to the hospital.
Three days later, however, they were smacking their lips on Plumpy'Nut almost ready to go home. Sometimes parents wait too long before bringing their child to doctors. We found Rashida Mamadou in intensive care. Just two hours later Rashida's little heart stopped beating. Mark says that story changed his life.
MOORE: I just thought, how come I've never heard of this? This is kind of too good to be true.
COOPER: That's what I thought as well. MOORE: And then I thought, well, someone should do this in the U.S.
COOPER (voice-over): From that MANA Nutrition was born. A nonprofit built next to a peanut field in Fitzgerald, Georgia, has been producing its own RUTF since 2010.
MOORE: So this map logs the 57 countries that MANA has gone to since it started.
COOPER: How many kids have you saved, do you think?
MOORE: At least 10 million, if you look at the production numbers.
COOPER: Ten million.
MICHAEL NYENHUIS, CEO, UNICEF USA: There are a number of RUTF suppliers around the world that we're able to tap into. MANA is one of the most crucial, especially as it comes to us being able to utilize U.S. government funding. And so they're essential to the whole system. And we just couldn't do much of our work without him.
[22:50:11]
MOORE: Good to see you brother.
NYENHUIS: How are you?
COOPER: There's got to be a lot of pride in the community to --
MOORE: Very proud. Yes.
COOPER: -- to do this work.
MOORE: Yes, Great people. People are inspired and that they make a difference.
COOPER (voice-over): We first met mark in February after the State Department cancelled all of MANA's USAID contracts.
MOORE: This is too important for us to have a pity party that we got cut.
COOPER (voice-over): Mark's determination paid off those orders for RUTF have been reinstated. And in late August, they got their first new order from the U.S. government in eight months.
COOPER: This whole thing is called Champions for Change, what's the change you've seen?
MOORE: Well, I'm not sure I'm a champion, but if I were to aspire to that I would say any child deserves to meet their potential. I see children meeting their potential when before we were losing them to this useless death. These aren't our kids, but in the great human family, they are our kids.
(END VIDEOTAPE) GUPTA: Saving and sustaining lives, it's important and fulfilling work as we've seen from many of tonight's champions. Next --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MELISSA WALKER, FOUNDER, JAZZ HOUSE KIDS: Should we visit you?
LAURA COATES, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Hi. Can I hear a little bit of it?
WALKER: We allow far too many young people to not have access to the very things that would unlock their greatness. My greatest reward is seeing lives changed and transformed.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GUPTA: You'll meet a woman who's enriching the lives of thousands of kids through America's homegrown art form, jazz.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:55:58]
GUPTA: Music can be a powerful tool to build social, academic and life skills, not to mention just have fun. Yet many students never get the chance to explore their musical abilities. Tonight's final champion for change is a visionary dedicated to sharing the joy and the power of jazz. She even gets in an anchor and chief legal analyst, Laura Coates, to start swinging to the beat.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Two. Ready go.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Growing up was tough. Music was really like the main thing that helped me.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Music can allow you to feel things.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was one of those students that really needed Jazz House to give them a future.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jazz was the one place in society where I was celebrated for being Indian.
WALKER: When you come to the Jazz House, you'll see who matters most, everyone.
COATES: Melissa Walker founded Jazz House Kids back in 2002 to try to bridge the gap in music education.
WALKER: Over 50 percent of the young people here, their families need some level of support. And for us, it's making sure kids have an instrument. They have a bus, they have tuition assistance. Part of our mission is to make sure that those doors are swinging wide open.
COATES: Hi.
WALKER: Can we visit you?
COATES: Can I hear a little bit of it?
WALKER: We allow far too many young people to not have access to the very things that would unlock their greatness. My greatest reward is seeing lives changed and transformed.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Playing the saxophone has helped me in real life with school, with friends.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think people just need that one person to like, believe in them and push you forward.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was able to have direction and make it to college.
WALKER: Jazz just improves and boosts their achievement. You have to have that focus, set goals, manage your time, be able to make real- time life decisions.
COATES: My son Adrian is a saxophonist. My daughter Sydney plays the trumpet. I have seen within them the confidence, the persistence, the improvement across other subjects in school by being able to use the skills that they learned through music. I want to take you back to when you were a kid. When you met jazz, something was ignited within you.
WALKER: I grew up in a family that loved music. It was rhythm and blues, and it was soul music. But when I heard the music of Billie Holiday, it was that pain, that emotion in that music. And that really became a journey of exploration for me.
COATES: The intergenerational communication that jazz provides is stunning.
WALKER: I always think of jazz as the only place where you can get an eight-year-old and an octogenarian on the stage together --
COATES: Yeah.
WALKER: -- doing something productive. The guiding principle here at Jazz House is to be the best you there that you can be. And if we can do that and do it together, which is what you do on the band stand. You're now watching democracy in action.
COATES: Wow. Great job.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[23:00:04]
GUPTA: That's our look at eight remarkable individuals who have found their own unique way to empower people in all walks of life. Their creativity and their commitment are impressive, but ultimately they show that anyone can be a Champion for Change by taking action on a cause that is close to your heart. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Thanks for watching.
