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

Episode 170: Healing Through the Arts: A Conversation with Drs. Wizdom Powell and Myron Rolle

·32 min·2 clips

Dr. Myron Rolle says he played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof as a 6-foot-2 Black man.

1. Well Beyond Medicine: The Nemours Children's Health Podcast focuses on "Healing Through the Arts" from the Ginsburg Institute Symposium in Orlando. 2. Carol Vassar speaks with psychologist Dr. Wizdom Powell and Nemours pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Myron Rolle, both named as central voices in the fireside chat and post-chat interview. 3. The episode asks what arts, creativity, music, and storytelling do for child health, resilience, and future readiness. 4. Powell says artistic expression is not a "nice to have" and can "fundamentally rewire the neural networks" for emotion regulation, cognitive flexibility, and imagination. 5. She links that brain work to trauma, childhood adversity, and the ability of young people to navigate difficult emotional experiences. 6. Rolle says the early brain's neuroplasticity makes arts, creative expression, healing gardens, nature walks, and spiritual guidance relevant after brain insults or injuries. 7. He gives examples from children with encephalomalacia, prenatal stroke, tumors, and brain bleeds who must "rewire and try to find functions" after injury. 8. Powell describes growing up in a community affected by a drug epidemic and says Center Stage Children's Theater, founded by jazz vocalist Margie Day Walker, gave her and her sisters a path out. 9. She says Saturday nights spent performing instead of being around gun violence led to piano lessons, the Gum Nose Magnet School for the Arts, and singing with the Virginia Opera Company. 10. Rolle says his own arts entry point came from a teacher who told him to try ballet for football footwork, which eventually led him to Fiddler on the Roof. 11. He says he played Tevye, sang "If I Were a Rich Man," and found that the stage applause felt different from scoring touchdowns. 12. Powell defines creativity as "the alchemy of the soul" and calls it a pathway to possibility, foresight, and innovation. 13. She says a cross-sector effort at the University of Connecticut brought policy, education, justice, and health care leaders together around the arts. 14. That work included art installations such as "reimagining joy among boys" in Hartford, Connecticut, where gun violence made future-focused community conversation difficult. 15. Powell argues that adults often see young people as problems to fix, risks to manage, or crises to solve, instead of seeing them as human beings who are becoming. 16. Rolle says creativity also means being "limber in your thinking" and resisting rigid, dogmatic medical routines when other patient-centered options can help recovery. 17. The tone is interview-based and reflective, with Powell offering longer conceptual answers and Rolle grounding them in surgery, teaching, and lived experience. 18. The format moves between symposium highlights and a post-chat conversation, with Vassar pressing for definitions, examples, and practical implications. 19. Listeners interested in child development, arts in health care, and pediatric medicine will get the most from it. 20. Listeners wanting a fast clinical-news update without arts policy context may skip it.

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