Public Health

Where We Go from Here: Towards an Actionable Agenda for Radical Healing

December 17, 2020  • Aspen Global Leadership Network & Health Innovators Fellowship

A global pandemic, racism, political polarization, and economic devastation. 2020 ushered in new crises and laid bare longtime, simmering wounds. We will learn to cope, but how do we thrive?

On December 17 from 2:00-3:00PM EST, join Aspen Health Innovators Fellows Wizdom Powell, Megan Ranney, and John Damon as they bear witness to these traumas and offer ways to leverage our collective energy to move us toward radical healing.

Radical healing addresses the root causes of emotional injuries leading to poor health outcomes and recognizes that our fates are linked intergenerationally—if we refuse to do the work, future generations will be forced to. We invite you to join us to do the work together, to heal ourselves, our communities, and the world. This program is hosted in partnership with the Resnick Aspen Action Forum and Health Innovators Fellowship.

More on Featured Fellows

Megan Ranney
Founding Director, Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health
Chief Research Officer, AFFIRM

Megan is an emergency physician, researcher, and national advocate for innovative approaches to public health. Her federally funded research focuses on developing, testing, and disseminating digital health interventions to prevent violence and mental illness. She also serves as chief research officer of AFFIRM Research and president of the board of GetUsPPE.org. Megan is editor of Annals of Emergency Medicine. She has received numerous awards for technology innovation, public health, and research and is a frequent media commentator on outlets ranging from CNN to The New York Times.She is a Fellow in class five of the Health Innovators Fellowship.

John D. Damon
CEO, Canopy Children’s Solutions

John serves as CEO of Mississippi’s largest and most comprehensive non-profit provider of children’s behavioral health, education, and social service solutions across all of the state’s 82 counties. For over 25 years, he has worked closely with all three branches of government to drive public policy change and clinical best practices for children. John’s work across many systems of care has shown him the unique window of opportunity for healing the transgenerational traumas the current syndemic has surfaced. He holds a master’s in marriage and family therapy and a PhD in clinical psychology.He is a Fellow in class five of the Health Innovators Fellowship.

Wizdom Powell
Director, Health Disparities Institute, UConn Health
Creative Diversity Director, Headspace

Wizdom is the director of The Health Disparities Institute and associate professor of psychiatry at UConn Health and an honorary professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. Recently, she joined Headspace as their creative diversity director. Her global health research investigates associations between racism, masculinities, and Black male health. In 2011-2012, she was appointed by President Obama to serve as White House Fellow to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. In addition to being an Aspen Health Innovators Fellow, she is an American Psychological Association (APA), Ford Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Kaiser Permanente fellow.She is a Fellow in class two of the Health Innovators Fellowship.

Moderated by: Margaret Lapiz
CEO & Co-Founder, Under One Roof

Margaret is the founder of Under One Roof, a social impact venture focused on advancing a collaborative, future-oriented, coordinated approach to health and wellbeing in farmworker and rural communities. She has over 25 years of experience as a corporate executive and board member overseeing operations, corporate strategy, diversity, and succession planning efforts. A former Kaiser Permanente EVP, she led organizational turnaround, created new business models, and built healthcare delivery approaches geared towards market expansion and growth. In Spring 2020, she was tapped to lead the COVID-19 response and recovery efforts for Santa Cruz County, California. She is a Fellow in class two of the Health Innovators Fellowship.