2019 - Building Healthy Community: Inequities and Polarized Tensions

Together Barry Johnson, PhD; Lindsay Burr, MS; and Peter Whitt, offer a fresh way of seeing and addressing reoccurring conflicts and tensions that affect the health of communities. They offer an important message and skill to help manage chronic issues, rather than avoid them. They provide practical knowledge to engage members of your community in addressing polarizing dilemmas, where both sides are not only “right”, but need each other’s wisdom to achieve a greater purpose.

2018 - Victor Strecher, "Life On Purpose: How Living for What Matters Most Changes Everything:

Victor J. Strecher, PhD, MPH is a Professor and Director for Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. As a teacher and researcher, Vic has spent much of his time studying the science and psychology of healthy personal change for both individuals and large populations. When Vic Strecher lost his daughter, Julia, to a rare heart disease, his world ended...only it didn’t.  

Vic's wife, Jeri, and older daughter, Rachael, were still very much alive, as were his two demanding careers as professor and businessman. What did end was his worldview: one based on long-held assumptions and beliefs about life, death, disease, health, risk, and ultimate purpose—subjects on which he had been writing and speaking for years—but whose reality he now questioned. Vic's experience of being "broken open" set him on a life-transforming journey. His book Life on Purpose explores the incredible connection between purposeful living and the latest scientific evidence on quality of life and longevity. 

Drawing on ancient and modern philosophy, literature, psychology, evolutionary biology, genetics, and neuroscience, as well as his experience in public health research, Vic Strecher reveals the elements necessary for a purposeful life and how to acquire them, and outlines an elegant strategy for improving energy, willpower, and long-term happiness, and well-being. He integrates these core themes into his own personal story—a tragedy that led him to reconsider his own life—and how a deeper understanding of purposeful living helped him not only survive, but thrive.

2017 - Ted Meyer Lectureship & Art Exhibition - "Scarred for Life: Healing Through Art"

Ted Meyer is a nationally recognized artist, curator and patient advocate who helps patients, students and medical professionals see the positive in the worst life can offer. Ted’s 16-year project “Scarred for Life: Mono-prints of Human Scars” chronicles the trauma and courage of people who have lived through accidents and health crises. Ted seeks to improve patient/provider communications and speaks about living as an artist with illness. Telling stories about his own art and the stories behind his scar art collection, he offers insight into living with pain, illness, and disfigurement. Ted has been featured on NPR and in the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and USA Today. His work has been displayed internationally in museums, hospitals, and galleries. As the current Artist in Residence at USC Keck School of Medicine, Ted curates exhibitions of artwork by patients whose subject matter coincides with medical school curriculum. Ted has curated shows by artists challenged by MS, cancer, germ phobias, back pain, and other diseases. In addition, he is a Visiting Scholar at the National Museum of Health and Medicine, and was recently invited to take part in the Aspen Seminars at the Aspen Institute.     

2016 - Lauran Hardin, "The Power of the Patient's Story to Transform Healthcare"

Lauran Hardin, MSN, RN-BC, CNL, is the Director of a Complex Care Center serving hospitals, multiple providers and more than 1,000 high frequency/complex patients in the Mercy Health System.  She recently received an Innovation Grant from Trinity Health, one of the largest multi-institutional Catholic health care delivery systems in the nation, to develop and test replicable tools and processes for complex patients.

She earned her Master’s degree in Nursing from the University of Detroit Mercy, with certifications as a Clinical Nurse Leader, Pain Management and Hospice.   She was awarded the National Clinical Nurse Leader Vanguard award from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing in January 2015 and Edge Runner designation from the American Academy of Nursing in June 2015. Hardin trained with the Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Center, spent several years working in hospice and co-developed the first Pain and Palliative Care service in the region.  Her special interests include the impact of trauma/loss on high frequency healthcare access and the economic potential of stabilizing complex patients through retraining/redesigning existing resources in the healthcare system.

2014 - Dr. Viggiano, "Interprofessional Education & Collaborative Practice: Advancing Person-Centered Care"

Dr. Viggiano, a member of the Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel (IPEC) and distinguished professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic, has led initiatives to develop competency based education, entrustable professional activities (EPAs), cultural transformation, and pedagogy of teaching and learning in medical education. He serves as chair of the Association of American Medical Colleges Group (AAMC) on Faculty Affairs and as a member of the board of directors for the International Association of Medical Science Educators.

2013 - Dr. Lisa Osborne, "Nursing Reconsidered"

Nursing Reconsidered: A presentation given by Dr. Lisa Osborne on the implications for nurses regarding the intentionality and the impact on health systems and the delivery of health care.