It has probably been used at innumerable conferences before this one. But when the gathering in question is TEDMED 2012, the world takes notice.
How would some of the best minds (70 speakers, over 1000 delegates) give new meaning to a discipline mired in financial, ethical and scientific stalemate? What mind-boggling breakthrough would emerge from this three-and-a-half day idea orgy?
Not that I needed any convincing. As a proud, longstanding TEDaholic, having my scholarship application accepted was all I needed to pack my bags and head to the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., the new home of TEDMED.
I came. I saw. I took in the grandeur of all the historic conference locations: the Opera House, the Library of Congress, the National Portrait Gallery and the National Building Museum.
I left with some invaluable connections, a couple of personal insights, and a few memorable ideas.
The future of health and medicine, in my view, will be built on the following themes:
1. Making prevention popular and profitable
To my delight, one of the biggest ideas – both on the stage and behind the scenes this year – was centered around the largest public health problem of the 21st century. Chronic disease (obesity, diabetes, cancer, hypertension, mood disorders) is now the leading cause of death in both the western and developing world.
Current healthcare models are built to address the aftermath of chronic disease – way, way downstream. So too are the incentives for healthcare providers.
The absurdity of this set-up was brought home by Ivan Oransky, Executive Editor, Reuters Health who regaled us with stories of prevention gone wrong a.k.a. the obsession of the medical community with indiscriminate screening for “sub-clinical” disease. In this paranoid state, no one is spared from being a “previvor” (those at risk of cancer who never develop the disease) or at the very least, suffering from “pre-death”. He urged us to take a “less is more” approach in an era where the cost to benefit ratio of the search for “pre-conditions” is dangerously high.
Meanwhile, the horrific results are in plain sight. Zooming in on the obesity epidemic were John Hoffman, Vice President, HBO Documentary Films and Dr. Judith Salerno, Executive Officer of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, as they presented Weight of the Nation, a four-part series and large scale public health campaign premiering May 14.
But there is hope.
As Sandeep Kishore (precocious and passionate Co-chair of the Young Professionals Chronic Disease Network) astutely pointed out, medical education is based on a paradigm that is a 100 years old. Chronic disease is a systems issue, where the “pathogens are social, man-made; as are the vectors”. He pointed out that of the 30+ years gained in life expectancy in the past century in the U.S.A., only 5 years could be attributed to medical care – the rest reflect societal change. Calling for a medical student led revolution, he hoped a new model of thinking based on addressing the “causes of the causes” of chronic disease would emerge.
This is great news for those of us who subscribe to systems thinking. The behavior of a system is dependent on its structure. System structure trumps willpower over and over again. The epidemic of chronic disease has been nurtured by an intentionally convoluted, ethically bankrupt coalition of government, medical, pharmaceutical and food industry cohorts. Reversing the trend will require a collaborative social solution, rather than guilt-tripping the masses over their lack of personal responsibility.
2. Social justice = better health
There was no shortage of brilliant examples of social justice advocacy making real impact in health care.
Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director, Equal Justice Initiative challenged us to talk about the things that nobody talks about: the state of the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned. He reminded us that years from now, we will not be judged by our technology, entertainment or design, but by those “lurking in the shadow”; our identity will be revealed by how we tackle issues of poverty and injustice. Quoting Rosa Parks, he reminded us that this work will “make you tired, tired, tired…..and that’s why you must be brave, brave, brave”.
Rebecca Onie has certainly heeded the call. Co-founder of Health Leads and one of Forbes magazine’s top 30 social entrepreneurs in the world, she advocates for prescription of basic resources – food, housing, utilities – by doctors to their population of low-income patients. A team of college volunteers then works to connect the prescription with available community resources. The most creative use of hospital waiting room real estate!
Violinist Robert Gupta raised the emotional quotient of the audience several levels with his sublime musical performance and storytelling. A musical prodigy and past medical researcher, Robert created Street Symphony: a musical outreach concert series using music to help heal the mentally ill living within homeless, incarcerated and Veteran communities.
3. Interdisciplinary research, crowd-sourcing and the power of networks
A glimpse into the frontier labs reveals an amazing world of collaboration: physician scientists working together with mathematicians, engineers and video gamers.
Seth Cooper, Co-creater of Foldit, a scientific discovery game, uses crowd-sourcing & the “power of play” to help solve complex protein folding problems that translate to biochemical solutions.
Meanwhile Francis Arnold, Professor, California Institute of Technology, indulges in (safe) sex on the petridish: bringing together protein sequences from different species that reassemble into 3-D functional protein molecules. The result? Enzymes with longer lives that are used in cancer therapy or enzymes that help extract alcohol from plants for biofuel. The possibilities are endless.
The physician of the future will be a “networkologist”, claimed Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Director of the Center for Complex Network Research, Northeastern University. The days of organ-based and “silo” medicine are over. Human disease, at the cellular level, is a complex network of infinite connections that transcend neat little anatomical delineations. Decoding these maps will translate into a new approach to cure.
The thought was echoed by Jonathan Eisen, Professor, UC Davis Genome Center, who reminded us that our bodies are a “teaming ecosystem of microbes”. This cloud of non-pathogens, rather than being inert, are a functioning organ, actively influencing our genetics and behavior, and vice-versa. The Human Microbiome Project aims to sequence the DNA of this community, with the hope that it will help us better understand the pathogenesis of various metabolic and immune diseases.
4. Art as medicine
Not a novel idea, but one that is perhaps often forgotten. The TEDMED community was treated to a fantastic range of music and performance that ranged from the invigorating acrobatics of TRACES to the sublime spoken word artistry of Sekou Andrews and Steve Connell.
Perhaps E.O. Wilson summarized it best: “The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and works like a bookkeeper”.
Beyond the speakers, it was the connections made at the Social Hub that will stay with me for a long time: a fantastic meeting of hearts and minds working towards a common goal – bringing the present front lines of medicine closer to a healthier future.
One of the biggest turning points in my meditation practice came via understanding a key emphasis in the Buddha’s teachings: that of training the mind, rather than following the heart.
Up until then, like so many others, I had been riding the meditation train for years with mixed success.
I read numerous books on the subject, attended Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction seminars, visualized a gazillion tracks of guided serenity & mantras, and sat through many hours of binaural beat frequencies with the goal of synchronizing my brain hemispheres into a more relaxed alpha range, and on a good day even a deep theta state.
Though I made some progress, and often felt calm or relaxed, I could never seem to sustain that feeling. I had complied with the spiritual notion of following my bliss, but mindfulness remained out of reach – a distant, illusory, mythical destination.
The instructions seemed simple enough: “stay in the present”,“be in the now”, just “simply be aware of what is arising in the moment”. I did all of those things, and did them well – yet it felt completely, inexorably hollow and empty.
Turns out I had it all wrong.
As Buddhist teacher Joseph Goldsteinputs it, I was “being aware, but not mindful; being present but not free”.
Whoa.
Goldstein refers to this as “black Lab consciousness” – the primitive tendency of the mind to remain in a state of mere knowing/awareness of the present moment while identifying, without question, with various sense impressions (sights, sounds, sensations, thoughts, emotions) that arise moment to moment.
In other words, though I had begun to notice my emotional dramas in the moment, I still hung on to them as “mine” with great fervour. No wonder I continued to suffer.
With the help of Goldstein and Thanissaro Bhikkhu (another Buddhist master), I subsequently learnt that true mindfulness consists of two parts:
1. Developing the ability to keep something in mind
In meditation practice, we usually keep the breath in mind and make it our ally – it is always with us, a place where body and mind conveniently meet. Focusing on the body of breath as it moves in and out – allowing it to be as it is without manipulation – helps bring the mind to a comfortable place to rest in.
This restful state helps sensitize us to everything else that is going on – right here, in the present moment, setting the stage for the second part of mindfulness.
With practice, the mind learns to hold not just breath, but all objects that may arise in our daily life, off the cushion, with the same ease.
2. Appropriate Attention
Being present is not enough – we must now be alert to what is arising and how we are relating to it.
How we frame the present moment is crucial. Are we identified with the sensations/thoughts/emotions coming up? (And they always will – the point of meditation is not to resist or suppress them).
If we find ourselves carried away with pleasant thoughts or disgusted with the unpleasant, it is a sign of identification. In that moment, though we are aware /present, we are far from being free.
The alternative is to harness the mind’s amazing repertoire of concentration, imagination and ingenuity to ask questions that lead to wise discernment:
Will the current line of thinking/relating lead to more or less suffering?
What are the causes and conditions that led to this moment? How might they be altered for a better outcome for all?
Appropriate attention creates the space where we have the freedom to choose skilful intentions translating to actions that bring us closer to peace.
Thanissaro Bhikkhu calls mindfulness just one “spice on our meditation shelf”. It develops over time, as we learn to keep coming back over and over to the present moment. With practice, mindfulness leans into and merges with other qualities of the free mind: patience, compassion, acceptance, insight, equanimity and goodwill.
Some of the practice tools I have found tremendously helpful are:
When focusing on the breath, rather than rigidly following it in and out, imagine your body as an open window. Like a breeze that is free to enter and leave, so too is the breath.
On and off the cushion, practice “mental noting”. This is the simple act of recognition of objects or events arising in each moment e.g. “in”, “out”, “thinking”, “desire”, “fear” etc. By naming what arises, we create some distance, a space for the identification to dissolve into.
It doesn’t matter how many times we get distracted – as long as we come back, over and over, to the present moment, alert and attentive.
Wise discernment is appropriate, judging our performance is unnecessary. The spice of mindfulness has a gentle flavour.
Thich Nhat Hanh has described mindfulness “like the sun – when it shines on things, they are transformed”.
When we care about what happens in each moment, and relate skilfully to it, we create a new narrative for our lives.
For incredible meditation instruction and wisdom, join author and teacher Susan Piver’s ongoing Open Heart Project.
In this video, she talks about the practice of mindfulness, followed by a 10 min meditation instruction:
“The first step toward peace-building is through looking inward, cultivating your own inner peace and then, looking outward to bring peace to the world.
As Mindfulness Ambassadors you are joining hundreds of council members from around the world who stand for kindness and compassion – driving positive impact in your community”.
With that encouragement and inspiration to volunteer as a future mindfulness -facilitator, I left the day long Exploration workshop conducted by Mindfulness Without Borders, a non-profit organization founded by TheoKoffler and boasting an advisory council that includes Deepak Chopra and Daniel Goleman.
Having initiated programs in Rwanda, Uganda, Nigeria and North America, the organization focuses on educating youth, empowering them to face life’s challenges equipped with the tools of mindful-awareness and social-emotional competencies.
Centered around a highly participatory “Ambassador Council” process, the program consists of twelve council sessions spread over twelve weeks, exploring topics ranging from mindful listening, mind-bodyawareness, to handling emotional triggers, living positive values and being the change.
The expectation is that graduates from the program will continue to build on this foundation by sharing this knowledge with their community (in daily life and as trained facilitators) as well as deepening their own practice.
Maternal health is not a topic I spend much time thinking about, yet I found myself completely captivated at the recent Canadian public premiere of No Woman No Cry, a documentary film by Christy Turlington Burns.
Hosted by the team at Grand Challenges Canada with Christy in attendance, the film provided some fascinating insights into both the evolution of Burns from supermodel to activist, and the state of pregnant women worldwide.
Following the experiences of four pregnant women in four different corners of the world (Tanzania, Guatemala, Bangladesh and the U.S.), the film immediately draws you in and keeps you firmly engaged thanks to content that is extremely visceral and authentic.
You can’t help but feel the young Tanzanian woman’s heroic agony - as she walks 5 miles, in labor, from her hut to the nearest medical center – only to discover that she might have a complication that is beyond the capacity of the staff to handle. The fact that she makes it alive to the city hospital center later is miraculous, while the glaring barrier of inadequate access to quality maternal care is brilliantly brought home to the audience.
In Bangladesh, the at-risk pregnant protaganist’s reluctance to birth her child outside her slum home – a huge local cultural stigma - is heartwrenching and compelling. So is the issue of religious ideology influencing abortion law in Guatemala, while in the U.S., a pregnant woman is confronted with the paradox of being surrounded by state-of-the-art hospitals but complete inaccessibility due to lack of health insurance.
What was clearly apparent – both in the film, and in the panel discussion afterwards – were Christy’s sincerity, knowledge and commitment to this cause. Her interest began when she survived severe bleeding complications during the birth of her first child. Since then she has gone on to educate herself via a Masters in Public Health at Columbia University, becoming a spokesperson and advocate for maternal and child health, working with organizations such as CARE, and creating www.everymothercounts.org.
Overall, I think Christy definitely succeeds in her intention to shed a sensitive light on the immense challenge of global maternal and reproductive health.
A woman dies every 90 seconds from a pregnancy-related complication. About 90% of these deaths are entirely preventible.
Despite this horrific statistic, improving maternal health globally is lagging behind as the Millennium Development Goal that has made the least progress since it was created along with seven others in the year 2000.
3. Get inspired by those working on solutions to this “grand challenge” – visit Grand Challenges Canada and watch this TEDxChange @Delhi talk by their CEO Dr. Peter Singer:
My dream of attending the TED Conference came virtually true today.
Thanks to the TEDxToronto team and the generosity of the Center for Social Innovation(CSI), Day 2 of the ongoing TED 2011 conferencewas made freely accessible to a handful of TED enthusiasts via live webcast.
We cozied up at the CSI digs in downtown Toronto and immersed ourselves into the wondrous world of game-changing innovators and thought leaders gathered presently in Long Beach California. There is something truly magical about the synergies of being part of a live event, and it was a thrill to witness both the poise and gaffs of the speakers in real time.
For me, there were two highlights from today’s sessions:
First, the fact that TED curator Chris Anderson experimented with guest curation, inviting none other than Bill Gates to choose & moderate the four speakers that made up the “Knowledge Revolution” section. Gates did a tremendous job and his enthusiasm was clearly evident and infectious.
Second, I predict that Salman Khan’s talk will join the most memorable/most talked about list this year. A hedge fund analyst turned social change driving educator, Salman showcased the next iteration of learning: via 12 minute single-topic videos that are projected to revolutionize the classroom this century. His idea goes beyond creating creative videos: he demonstrated the nuances of the new teacher-student paradigm, including “encouraging experimentation but expecting mastery”, building progressive “knowledge maps”, and a data-centered tracker that both students and teachers can utilize to chart progress.
Epidemiologist Bruce Aylward’s call to spread the “End Polio Now” idea. If we don’t it has the potential to spread from a few cases restricted to four developing countries to 200,000 cases worldwide by 2030!
Filmmaker Morgan “Supersize Me” Spurlock’s account of adventures in embracing transparency while making The Greatest Film Ever Sold (a cheeky look into theworld of marketing/advertising) and director Julie Taymor’s perspective on the “rough magic of theater” were entertaining and heartwarming.
MAKE AN INSPIRED CHANGE!
Ever wondered what a quadratic equation was or how photosynthesis really works?
From math to science, finance to the credit crisis, partake in your own Knowledge Revolution by checking out the answers at theKhan Academy.
Toronto continues to surprise me. I’m constantly reminded of what an amazing hub of innovation and research it is – from environmental, technology and social entrepreneurs to trailblazers in medicine, we’ve got them all!
Organ transplantation has become an increasingly important area of intrigue for me in recent years, and so I was pleasantly surprised to learn about the miraculous exploits of the Lung Transplantation team at the Toronto General Hospital, led by thoracic surgeon Dr. Shav Keshavjee.
Building on a rich tradition of hosptial firsts (first single and double lung transplants and first artifical lung), Keshavjee is currently tackling the mind-boggling problem of decay in lungs harvested from donors before they reach the recipient. He has developed a successful Lung Perfusion system that enables preservation of the organs for up to six hours outside the donor body.
But he hasn’t stopped there.
He is currently busy using gene therapy to actually modify and optimize donor lungs so that they may have the greatest chance for success in the recipient’s body! If all goes well, in the future surgeons may be able to remove injured/diseased lungs, repair them outside the body, and put them back!
Not only will this research help improve the odds of lung transplantation, but also other organs such as the kidneys and many more.
Does the dis-ease in your body dictate the outcome of your life experience or do your mind, your passions, and your spirit have a say?
The oft-quoted, much-touted, and pretty jaded “mind-body connection” and its effects on health and disease, takes on a new life (literally and figuratively) as soprano Charity Tillemann-Dick, a double lung transplant recipient (one of Dr. Shav Keshavjee’s success stories) brilliantly demonstrates in her TEDMED 2010 talk.
With that simple four word mantra outlined in an amazing PopTech! talk (below) and a life mission dedicated to living it,Kevin Starrrecently joined the ranks of my personal superheroes.
A physician turned managing director of the Mulago Foundation, Kevin has been driven by his passion to carry forward the superb legacy of his medical school mentor Rainer Arnhold. Arnhold, a pediatrician by training, and a humanitarian by choice, spent much of his life working hard to improve the lives of children mired in poverty.
The mission statement is simple, yet immensely powerful:
” Mulago looks for the best solutions to the biggest problems in the poorest countries.”
What made Starr’s talk so – well, impactful (pun intended) – were his ideas around measuring the real impact that various social change ideas eventually have on any given problem. He reveals surprising follow-ups to the failures of highly touted and award winning projects such as LifeStraw and the $100 Laptop among others.
Watch as he outlines the four compelling questions that he feels must be answered to ensure a big idea makes it from drawing board to changing lives in real life.
MAKE AN INSPIRED CHANGE!
I’m reminded of the advice a physician-mentor friend once gave me, as I was charting my life path away from medicine. He urged me to follow the same steps as scientists in a lab, drafting the next big experiment:
Identify your key ASSETS (what are your unique qualities/talents to give to the world?)
Clarify your target POPULATION (who will benefit from this experiment a.k.a your life work?)
What will the INTERVENTION be (specific action plan for the project)
Set the CONTEXT of the experiment (background research & information that highlights the need for your intervention)
Lay out a clear OUTCOME (what are the specific end-points that will determine the success or failure of your intervention)
What will your SECONDARY GAIN be (be honest about your motivations to engage in the project)
All that’s left then is tons of hard work and an amazing impact on the world!
Centered around the theme that “an idea without action is just an idea”, TEDaholics across Toronto were treated to a bigger, better, and definitely shinier TEDx event today!
Paul Crowe (co-founder) and his team pulled out all the stops: from the fashionable location Glenn Gould Studio, MTV hosts, amazing stage design & set production, traditional TED style chocolate breaks to the live webcast across numerous satellite locations worldwide, they had it all!
The speaker line-up was impressive, though at times their “call to action” fell short, in my opinion. The ones that left an impact were:
Trey Anthony, actor, writer, speaker and activist, who urged us to come out of the box that society imposes on us, so we can let our creativity unfold to action.
George Kourounis, explorer and host of Angry Planet, recounted amazing stories from his travels to the most dangerous places on earth that taught him to turn fear into adventure.
Neil Hetherington, CEO of Habitat for Humanity Toronto, asked us to put our skills & passion for changing the world into the work of existing non-profits (of which there are plenty, he reminded us) rather than getting entangled in creating a new one.
Perhaps the most vivid example of an idea that led to local action was the Design For Change project. The brainchild of Kiran Sethi, a teacher in India, this initiative has spread across the world inspiring children to create and deliver solutions to what they consider the most pressing problems in their communities and lives.
Kiran Sethi’s TED talk is here:
MAKE AN INSPIRED CHANGE!
What is YOUR call to action?
Have you been inspired by an idea, but haven’t had the time or courage to follow through on it?
Though it might seem like creating the impossible, remember that “impossible” simply means that the path from “here” to “there” is not visible to you yet – it does exist! The only way to discover it is to take the first or next step.
Hands down, one of the most inspiring and influential duo in my life have been architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart.
Creaters of the Cradle to Cradle design philosophy, they blew me away with their vision of seeing a “world ofabundance, not limits”. I am completely drawn to their maverick idea that “design is a signal of intention” and theirs is to shift the current endlessly destructive model to one that “loves all children, of all species, for all time”.
Rather than making humans feel guilty, the C2C concept celebrates human creativity, culture and productivity, integrating nature’s effective design principles and integrating business and the environment.
Scoffing at the traditional “reduce, reuse, recycle” mantra as just a “downcycling” spiral, C2C design focuses on making products such that they enter either the “technical” or “biological” nutrient cycle once their life is over. This way they can be completely used in another avatar rather than ending up in landfills.
In other words, the goal is to eliminate waste completely and turn it into food. This is “eco-effectiveness” as opposed to the herd mentality of “eco-efficiency”.
The new breed of eco-effective designers are constructing:
Buildings that, like trees, produce more energy than they consume and purify their own waster water
Factories that produce effluents that are drinking water
And – a personal favorite – ice cream wrappers (biodegradable and embedded with seeds of endangered species) that can be freely littered into the earth where they dissolve and sprout new life!
Whoa!
In one of his interviews, Michael joked that given a choice, would you strive for your relationship with your significant other to be merely “sustainable” or something greater? Similarly, in a world running amok chanting “sustainability”, he challenges us to shift our notion of what is possible.
Like the industrious ant or the generous cherry tree, could humans use their ingenuity to become integrated natives of the planet rather than isolated consumers?
Did you know that nearly 2.4 million lbs of plastic enter our oceans every minute?
In honor of Earth Day, I’m posting some videos from two of my favorite websites to help you take a moment and reflect on the state of the planet.
Inspired by oceanographer Charles Moore’s discovery of the Pacific Garbage Patch, artist Chris Jordan’s talk at Poptech! 2009 brings the horrific reality of this statistic to light in his characteristically poignant and devastatingly brilliant photographs.
MAKE AN INSPIRED CHANGE!
Wish you had some practical information that went beyond mundane generalities on saving the earth?
Watch as scientist extraordinaire Catherine Mohr does some astounding calculations on our behalf, to highlight what really matters when building a house that is green.
