Hi! Welcome to The Scan, a newsletter containing insights from organizers and practitioners who are defining health and healing on their own terms. You can check out our intro issues to learn more!
Anything else you’d like to see? Send me a DM here in Substack — we’re just getting started, so I’m excited to see how this evolves.
Here we go!
The Scan (#4)
PULSE:
YES! Magazine is running a great series called Progress 2025, a set of visions and solutions that center human and planetary needs (a counter to the dystopian policies laid out in Project 2025). This dialogue with reproductive justice activist Renee Bracey Sherman lays out a liberatory future for the field.
Leaders charged with addressing health inequities, especially BIPOC women and nonbinary folks, frequently operate in extractive environments that devalue their own intuition and wisdom. New Seneca Village, a collective of social justice leaders, just published an article in The Nonprofit Quarterly about the necessity of restorative principles in BIPOC leadership and governance.
For those of you headed to APHA next week, Human Impact Partners’ most recent newsletter highlights sessions on community power-building, public health advocacy, and more. This is also a great space for updates from across the intersecting organizing worlds of social movements connected to health.
HISTORIES:
I’m excited to share the first episode of Sonogram: An Audio Series! For many years, across many spaces where people were working to reimagine health, I’ve yearned for some sort of forum to talk about our “why”s — something that’s easy to disconnect from as we get caught up in the tangles of life and labor. I’m particularly curious about the early values, life events, and sensations that shape how we see health — not (just) as an intellectual concept, but as something we actually feel and experience.
This kickoff conversation is with Artair Rogers, a friend, work conspirator, and fellow reflector: I’m grateful to him for being willing to share so openly about his own histories and experiences (something we talk about in the episode, actually), and I’m hopeful that this might be of interest to others who’d like to share their own perspectives. To learn more, you can check out this overview. What does health mean to you? What histories shaped that understanding? What do we owe to one another?
EDUCATION CONTINUED:
Something slightly different this time: science is of course one of the fundamental paradigms that shape health, but the nuances of human life can’t always be summed up in tidy boxes. In those times, I turn to art. Poetry in particular, to help me make sense of the world. One of my favorite works is The Cardiologist’s Daughter by Natasha Kochicheril Moni. It’s a beautiful exploration of the threads that bind our physical beings to the ethereal: grief, identity, and more.
Question(s) for the day: What is a book, a poem, a painting, a sculpture, a game, a show, etc. that shapes your understanding of health and healing?