Issues
Healing Root Causes:
Solutions for Individual & Collective Repair
The Washington Post recently published a disturbing year-long examination on the declining health and life expectancy of Americans. They report:
“After decades of progress, life expectancy — long regarded as a singular benchmark of a nation’s success — peaked in 2014 at 78.9 years, then drifted downward even before the coronavirus pandemic… an extreme manifestation of an underlying deterioration of health and a failure of the health system to respond.
Chronic conditions thrive in a sink-or-swim culture, with the U.S. government spending far less than peer countries on preventive medicine and social welfare generally… The calamity of chronic disease is a ‘not-so-silent pandemic.’”
It’s not just physical health that’s in decline — it’s also our mental, familial, and social health. And the underlying causal issues driving these declines are mostly overlooked in the current political establishment and in public policy.
That’s why our campaign is launching a holistic initiative for addressing, preventing, and healing our physical and emotional wellbeing: Healing Root Causes: Solutions for Individual and Collective Repair.
Overview of key areas of focus:
- Preventative Healthcare Focused on Cultivating Wellness
- Robust Mental Health Support
- whole-person Educational Systems Focused on Social & Emotional Learning
- Safe and Nurturing Communities & Families
- Healing-Focused Justice Systems
- International Peacebuilding
To help make this unprecedented new initiative a reality, stand with us here: There’s an urgent need for these kinds of integrative, whole-person, whole-system approaches. Making them broadly available will cultivate more fulfilled and productive lives and communities, unleashing a wave of human potential unlike anything modern humanity has ever seen.
We hope you will take time to learn more about this new initiative. It’s time that more holistic and root-cause investments become a priority in our nation and world.
It will take advocacy and support from all of us to help make it happen.
Thank you for your support,
OVERVIEW:
It is a moral imperative that we lovingly care for one another like the human family that we are. I have a robust platform looking at the many levels of care necessary, from economic justice, to protecting our planet for all generations to come, and so much more—all of which are essential to a healthy future.
There is however a vast though regrettably under-focused upon domain of supports that deal with taking better care of ourselves both physically and emotionally. The interpersonal and intrapersonal resources we need to co-exist in more peaceful and productive ways require much greater public investment. The fields of Public Health, psychology, social science, violence prevention, peacebuilding, trauma-informed mental health recovery, and many others now offer us remarkable, leading-edge remedies for the ailments facing humanity, particularly those focused on root-causes and solutions.
We can use this growing expertise to more broadly develop our society in the following areas:
- Preventative healthcare focused on cultivating enduring wellness;
- Robust mental health supports;
- Whole-person education systems that focus on social and emotional learning;
- Building safe and nurturing communities & families;
- Healing-focused justice systems;
- International peacebuilding.
There’s an urgent need for these kinds of integrative, whole-person, whole-system approaches. The science and practices in support of these areas are actually well-developed, with ample evidence of efficacy. What’s primarily lacking are infrastructures and the priorities to invest at the scale necessary for more widespread availability. It’s time that we prioritize these types of methodologies into robust policy priorities. Doing so in a broad-scale way will cultivate more fulfilled and productive lives and communities, unleashing a wave of human potential unlike anything modern humanity has ever seen.
While there will ultimately be welcome cost-savings that will come from these types of prevention-focused investments, the tremendous growth potential they will engender is even more encouraging. These investments will help us better relate to one another more effectively, form a stronger collective sense of shared purpose and help each of us live more fulfilled lives—removing the unnecessary health and psycho/social barriers to realizing our full potential.
The time is now for humanity to take a leap forward—to stop tinkering at the edges of the struggles we face and employ solutions that deal with root relational causes and better develop a more whole, healed society.
Overview of Root Cause Solution Areas of Focus Include:
We need a whole-person educational system in America that works to expand not only a student’s intellectual horizons but also her cultural, emotional, and psychological ones. We must direct robust resources towards social and emotional learning, conflict resolution education, mindfulness, life skills, physical and mental health, implementing trauma-informed systems and more.
Violence is widespread in our communities. Crime and violence prevention as well as smart interventions using public health approach models that are deeply informed by any potential Adverse Childhood Experiences should be a primary focus to help our communities and families flourish. We will work to empower our communities to implement proven and promising programs and necessary infrastructure to transform the underlying conditions that cause crime, violence and abuse, and repair the trauma that so often underlies it. There will be a focus on such supports as: trauma-informed child, adolescent and adult family wrap-around service systems; domestic-violence and child abuse prevention and interruption; community outreach and interruption; police-community relations; increased access to mental health services and more.
Healing the Past, Present, and Future
Family and community related neglect, abuse, and trauma — for children, adolescents and adults — underlie almost every element of the challenged human and societal relations we face. These toxic dynamics are one of the deepest root causes of lasting trauma. Without proper support, they can create mental health crises and emotional struggles throughout life, and are passed down from one generation to the next. These pervasive patterns negatively impact the wellbeing of our personal relationships, families, school and social systems, communities, and ultimately every corner of our nation and world. All of which leads to large-scale cultural norms and values that get mired in trauma distortions and a myriad of unhealthy dynamics.
We see this played out on many scales of life, including racial inequities and racism; LGBTQ+ phobia; violent crime; domestic violence; school bullying and mass shootings; toxic political discourse and divides; historically high levels of toxic stress, suicide and depression; heightening divorce rates, and more. Further, climate change presents unprecedented challenges to our very near future, including the potential to displace millions of people and accelerate human conflict around the world as resources become scarce.
We must meet this moment with leading edge solutions that encompass the deeper root causes. My administration will take a holistic, integrated approach to help all Americans meet their full potential.
Broadcast the Message
