How Healing Works: And What it Means for Healthcare

We now know that most of health – possibly up to 80% – comes from factors outside of what we usually do in the clinic or hospital. The primary determinants of health involve social, environmental, lifestyle and complementary medicine factors that few clinicians learn to deliver. How can we integrate these health determinants into our routine practice? In this talk, I will describe a simple, systematic clinical approach that uses the core of the placebo effect—meaning and context—that helps patients tap into their inherent healing capacity. Drawing on the most rigorous scientific evidence available, I will show that by shifting the patient/doctor encounter to focus on the whole patient and their environment can quickly move us toward integrative health that enhances healing and reduces chronic disease.

Dr. Jonas is a practicing family physician, an expert in integrative health and health care delivery, and a widely published scientific investigator. His new book, How Healing Works, will be released on January 9, 2018 from Ten Speed Press. 
 
From 2001-2016, he was Chief Executive Officer of Samueli Institute, a nonprofit medical research organization supporting the scientific investigation of healing processes in the areas of stress, pain and resilience. Dr. Jonas was the Director of the Office of Alternative Medicine at the NIH from 1995-1999, and prior to that served as the Director of the Medical Research Fellowship at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians.  His research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, Nature Medicine, the Journal of Family Practice, the Annals of Internal Medicine, and The Lancet.