Nova Scholar Osagie Obasogie leads a project in partnership with the Los Angeles Review of Books exploring the history and persistent legacies of racism and eugenics in science and medicine.
Three years in, the Nova Institute project team details achievements and challenges in a demonstration project that equipped primary care patients and providers with effective, simple stress management tools.
In his new book, Healing and Medicine, Nova Scholar Paul Dieppe, BSc, MD, FRCP, FFPH, Emeritus Professor at the Universities of Exeter and Bristol, examines the relationship between healing and medicine through the eyes of an academic physician who changed his interests from biomedical research to healing late in his medical career.
Last month we lost an inspiring hero and a true friend of the Nova Institute, Tom Stoner. Tom put his heart, energy, and visionary mind
Racism is increasingly recognized as a public health crisis throughout the United States. Nova Fellow Heidi Gullet and Scholar Kurt Stange’s work illustrates how Community-Based System Dynamics can be used to tackle challenging problems exacerbated by racism and identify community-driven solutions.
A compelling concept woven throughout the recent 2022 Nova Annual Conference was “tapestry thinking” and ways we can embrace this idea to help people, places, and the planet flourish. Here we highlight just a few presentations from our amazing speakers to inspire you!
Good communications is key to the Nova Institute for Health’s mission. In September 2022, we brought scientists and journalists together to explore these unique communications challenges and offer ideas and insight for solutions.
Healing is facilitated through safety, persistence, and trust.
Resources support us as we heal. They include reframing, responsibility, and positivity. “Making connections enabled participants to acquire and refine resources and skills that were essential in their healing journey. People also brought their own personal strengths to the journey.”
“Connection to others was an essential part of all the healing journeys.” Humans are social creatures, and even the most introverted of us need close relationships. Friends and family add meaning and value to life and help support us, in good times and bad.
When we experience relational trauma, relationships can feel scary, but reestablishing safety and trust in relationships is where the healing happens. (To be clear, we do not mean reestablishing safety and trust with abusers, but rather finding other healing relationships.)
“When safety and trust had been established, people were able to connect with helpers. The nature of the behaviours of helpers that fostered healing ranged from small acts of kindness to unconditional love.”
Healing probably means different things to different people, but one definition that emerged from the study is: “The re-establishment of a sense of integrity and wholeness.”
Healing was an emergent property that resulted from each individuals’ complex healing journey, a result of bridged connections between resources and relationships. “…they gradually found relief from suffering and began to exhibit emergent characteristics: a sense of hope, self-acceptance, and a desire to help others—the immediate precursors to healing.”
In varying degrees, “they were able to transcend their suffering and in some sense to flourish.”
Suffering is the ongoing pain from wounding.
There is some debate about whether people always experience suffering on the path to healing.
Wounding happens when we experience physical or emotional harm. It can stem from chronic illness or by physical or psychological trauma for which we do not have the tools to cope, or a combination of those factors.
“The degree and quality of suffering experienced by each individual is framed by contextual factors that include personal characteristics, timing of their initial or ongoing wounding in the developmental life cycle and prior and current relationships.”
Characteristics: How predisposed someone may be to wounding/how many tools and resources someone may have to deal with trauma/illness.
Lifestages: Developmental timing plays an important role in the impact of trauma — young children often do not have the same resources as older adults.
Relationships: Relationships can provide solace and support for those suffering, while lack of healthy relationships can prolong suffering.
