#25: Turning Our Gaze Upstream
with
Dr. Kelly McDermott
Episode Summary
Dr. Kelly McDermott joins the show for a spirited conversation on the upstream factors which influence our health and impact our society. With her wealth of knowledge about research, policy and health behaviors, Kelly helps us make connections between chronic disease, Adverse and Positive Childhood Experiences, rites of passage, and stress.
Along the way we learn when Kelly’s professional trajectory aligned with her personal passions for yoga and meditation, she found herself researching things like the impact of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and Body Awareness interventions on Veterans with PTSD.
These early windows into the power of behavior rather than drugs to improve health fostered her desire to seek out answers to important questions like what interventions could impact health outcomes before they became chronic disease? And where does the capacity to have an integrated body awareness get established?
In Turning Our Gaze Upstream, we not only discover the roots that led Dr. McDermott into her current research on Rites of Passage, we find there is a certain gift and power the emerges when someone like Kelly chooses to translate that calling into the language of data and policy.
So consider yourself invited to listen into this energetic and important conversation with Jef Szi and Dr. McDermott as they look at the profound interactions between stress, behavior and health in our own lives but also in how we steward the next generations.
Dr. McDermott is an assistant professor and a Co-Director of the Health Policy Leadership Concentration in Population Health Sciences Department at University of San Francisco.
Show Links for Episode #25
Seminal Positive Childhood Experiences Paper
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Quiz (NPR website)
Original ACE Study by Felitti and Anda