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.
Our transdisciplinary community of Scholars and Fellows investigates critical questions, elevates evidence-based practices, and discovers cutting-edge solutions. These incredible thought leaders come from diverse fields—such as medicine, photobiology, atmospheric chemistry, epidemiology, and psychology—and their work examines the full spectrum of health, healing, and flourishing through many lenses. Here we share some highlights of their work.
Scholar Chris D’Adamo’s groundbreaking, first-ever core culinary medicine curriculum for first- and second-year medical students is published.
Scholars Rebecca Etz and Kurt Stange co-authored an article that advocates for three simple rules for equitable, quality, and sustainable generalist and specialist care.
Scholar Sara Warber co-authored a handbook which is a great provider-oriented resource for social prescribing nature-based interventions.
Fellows Carley Riley and Brita Roy recently published a new paper, which used the largest dataset in the U.S. to examine levels of thriving, struggling, and suffering at the county level, identifying trends and places of possible intervention for increased individual wellbeing.
Scholar Steven Woolf’s recent work highlights historical racial and socioeconomic disparities disproportionately impacted minorities during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in the largest decrease in life expectancy in Black and Hispanic Americans since 1998.
Fellow Carley Riley co-authored a new paper offering guidance and actionable practices to prioritize equity in learning health systems.
Scholar Judy Rollins new book incorporates data from an international study of artwork in hospitals and explores how art serves the diverse needs of patients, families, visitors, and staff in hospital settings.
Scholars Rebecca Etz and Kurt Stange helped create and guide an evidence-based plan for implementing high-quality, comprehensive, and equitable primary care in the US.
An exploration of post-traumatic growth provides hope for healing on all scales in Institute Scholar Susan Prescott’s co-authored paper.
Institute Fellow Carley Riley explores the health implications of social isolation and “social inequity.”
Scholar Susan Prescott co-authors an article highlighting an urgent need to remediate misinformation to address the various interrelated social and environmental challenges of our time.
Scholar Fred Foote publishes qualitative research findings about the Green Road at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
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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. “…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 debate about whether or not one actually needs to 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.
