Well Beyond Medicine: The Nemours Children's Health Podcast · Nemours Children's Health

Ep. 164: Healing Together: The Power of Creativity and Connection with Dr. Wizdom Powell

·35 min·2 clips

"There's no Calvary coming," Powell says about supporting young people locally.

1. Well Beyond Medicine: The Nemours Children's Health Podcast focuses on Dr. Wisdom Powell and Unified Youth, a youth mental well-being initiative centered on creativity, play, and connection. 2. Carol Vassar hosts Powell, who is an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut and chief executive officer of Unified Youth, and Powell has also appeared on the show in her former role as chief purpose officer at Headspace. 3. The episode asks what Unified Youth is for: building a new system for youth mental well-being that matches the world young people are actually growing up in. 4. Powell says Unified Youth was created by Manatt Phelps and Phillips and Booz Allen Hamilton after a retreat exercise that surfaced youth mental health and well-being as a priority. 5. She explains that a national search followed and that she emerged as the top candidate to lead the initiative. 6. Powell says the current youth mental health system was not built for the world young people want to grow up in, or are already growing up in. 7. She says adults have focused too much on trauma, woundedness, and crisis, while missing who young people want to become. 8. Powell describes Unified Youth as an effort to move upstream with lower-cost, scientifically proven methods that treat young people as reservoirs of untapped potential. 9. She says the organization centers creativity, play, and connection as evidence-backed tools for healing that are often mistaken for luxuries. 10. Powell names the gap between youth needs such as belonging, purpose, and agency and the systems currently available to them. 11. She says Unified Youth is trying to build infrastructures of care and wonder that every young person deserves. 12. Powell cites ArtPlace America as a model for creative placemaking and says that approach inspires Unified Youth's population-health strategy. 13. She says the first wonder ecosystem is planned for Los Angeles, where the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture has already built a creative well-being portfolio. 14. Powell says Unified Youth plans to fund five to 10 grassroots organizations in each wonder ecosystem, with invitations to apply for grants. 15. She names an upcoming peer mental health coaching training institute for transition-age youth ages 21 to 29, built with Headspace as a pathway to certification. 16. Powell says young people should not be invited to design work without real influence, and that youth voice will help shape curriculum, storytelling campaigns, and accountability. 17. Powell's style is direct, explanatory, and systems-focused, with repeated movement from vision to implementation. 18. The conversation uses specific examples from Los Angeles, Headspace, Art Pharmacy, and the University of Connecticut to keep the discussion grounded. 19. People interested in youth mental health, creative placemaking, and community-based care. 20. People looking for celebrity-style interviews or personal entertainment stories.

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