Fostering resilience in the face of adversity
The Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness’s inaugural Chester Pierce Symposium explored social factors that influence resilience and well-being.
November 14, 2024 – Resilience is not an individual trait that some people have, and others do not, K. Vish Viswanath recently told an audience at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Rather, it’s a process that ebbs and flows over the course of everyone’s lifetime, depending on the circumstances they face. And importantly, it can be bolstered with support.
Viswanath, director of the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness and Lee Kum Kee Professor of Health Communication, kicked off the Center’s inaugural Chester Pierce symposium by explaining that the event’s goals were two-fold: to elucidate causes of adversity and their health consequences, and to look at ways to mitigate adversity and help people bounce back. “Today is about empowerment and what can we do as a society to foster resilience,” he said.
Held Nov. 12 at Harvard Medical School’s Joseph B. Martin Conference Center, the event honored the legacy of Chester Pierce, a psychiatrist and faculty member at HMS and Harvard Chan School who passed away in 2016. Pierce is remembered as a pioneering advocate for mental health and civil rights.
During the symposium’s keynote address, David Williams, Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health, outlined his own groundbreaking research on the effects of racism on health. Williams developed the “everyday discrimination scale,” which measures Black people’s experiences with insults and slights such as receiving poorer service than others at restaurants or stores, or having people act as if they’re afraid of them. He said that people who score high on the scale have a broad range of adverse health conditions, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and poorer mental health. As a result of racial inequities in health, an average of 203 Black people in the U.S. die prematurely every day, he said.
Solutions he proposed included reducing implicit bias, diversifying the health care workforce, and identifying resilience factors and resources that help address the effects of racial discrimination on mental health. For example, there is evidence that religious engagement is supportive for African Americans, he said. Investments in early childhood, employment opportunities, and improved neighborhood and housing conditions are also needed, he said.
“Most Americans, national data reveals, do not know that racial inequities in health exist,” Williams said. “So, we need to raise awareness. We need to develop political will. We need to build empathy.”
Social support is key for resilience
During the first panel, Nancy Michael, a researcher at the University of Notre Dame spoke about her work using an approach called NEAR (neuroscience, epigenetics, adverse childhood experiences, and resilience) to mitigate the effects of toxic stress on individuals and communities. NEAR is based around the concept of experience-dependent plasticity, she said. Experiences can shape the brain’s structure and function at any age, but young children are particularly malleable. As a result, early exposure to abuse and trauma can have long-lasting mental and physical health consequences. Michael and her colleagues work with partner organizations to translate research in this field to meet community needs.
“Neuroscience doesn’t solve problems, but it surely seems to help people realize, ‘I’m not crazy,’” she said. When people learn about what adverse childhood experiences can do to the brain, it can provide moments of grace, forgiveness, and hope, she said.
Panelist Julia Hotz spoke about her book The Connection Cure, which discusses the practice of doctors making social prescriptions for “a non-medical community-based activity or resource designed to improve our health and strengthen our connections.” These include group activities such as art classes and nature walks, in addition to resources such as legal support and healthy food.
Hotz noted that medicine alone can’t fix structural inequities, but that social prescribing could be one way to address the social determinants of health. “I think it starts with understanding that our medicine doesn’t just come in bottles, it comes in what’s around us,” she said.
Returning to the theme of resilience, moderator Brittney Francis, a research scientist at the School’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, noted that talking about individual resilience can be problematic when it takes the focus away from structural issues that need to be addressed.
Hotz and Michael both said that social support is key to how they think about resilience. “From a mechanistic perspective, resilience is the body’s ability to experience challenge,” Michael said. “When friction occurs, we’re pushing on the nervous system … social support and resources help us reinstate the balance and recover.” She added, “We’re a social species. We’re interdependent and we never outgrow that.”
Two other panels at the event focused on flourishing amidst climate change and cultivating a happy and healthy work environment.
Photos: Anna Walsh
