From Health Care to Health, People to Planet
To celebrate National Public Health Week (April 4-10), Global Public Health Week (April 4-8), and World Health Day (April 7), we highlight 2021 inVIVO conference
We look at the whole picture, the entire lived experience that influences health.
Our work examines health through many lenses that intersect, and it often helps people who are underserved or experiencing trauma — for example, veterans suffering from PTSD, children with serious illness, low-income residents grappling with systemic racism and neglect, and others.
To celebrate National Public Health Week (April 4-10), Global Public Health Week (April 4-8), and World Health Day (April 7), we highlight 2021 inVIVO conference
Institute Scholar Rebecca Etz was recognized for her commitment to “comprehensive, coordinated, person-focused care” and awarded the Barbara Starfield Primary Care Leadership Award. Watch the video here.
The paper features transdisciplinary teams that have the potential to address complex socioecological problems and details a collaborative process undertaken to address these challenges.
California is ablaze. It was 130 degrees in the Mojave Desert two weeks ago. The Democratic and Republicans National Conventions have ended. The November election is coming toward us like a freight train. COVID-19 is flaring, subsiding, flaring again – and this is our new reality.
Some days I sit, staring out at the Chester River which flows to the Chesapeake Bay, which empties into the Atlantic. It’s beautiful here. There is room to think, room to dream, room to reflect. It is not Baltimore. It is not Hong Kong.
Dear Friends of the Institute, I am deeply grateful. Around the world, first responders, doctors, nurses, and family members are putting their lives on the
Institute Scholar George Kaplan, PhD, delivered a Capstone presentation: “Embracing Complexity: H.L. Mencken, Whole Systems, and Integrative Approaches to Health.”
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RT @VCUFamMed: Critically important work for #PrimaryCare by our own Dr. Etz and the @GreenCenterOrg. Read More
This is a timely look at the dire need for increased collective empathy as we... Read More
"Gun violence, then, is clearly a problem. To paraphrase former Surgeon General David Satcher ...... Read More
Over the past thirty years, we’ve been part of a movement to shift the primary approach to health from a focus on disease to a more complete approach. As reflected in our tagline, “For Health of People, Places, and Planet,” how we are building on “person health” and looking at the context of peoples’ lives and communities as well as the health of the planet we all share.
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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. Healing, in this sense, does not mean cured—none of the study participants were cured of their ailments—”but all developed a sense of integrity and wholeness despite ongoing pain or other symptoms.” In varying degrees, “they were able to transcend their suffering and in some sense to flourish.” When we begin to heal, we find increased capacity for hope, renewed motivation to help others, and are more able to accept ourselves as we are.
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.”