6 years ago What’s the Fix? is a conference specifically created to bring stories to light and to use those stories to help change the mess that is health care. We aren’t trying to fix health care at the macro level (an extremely difficult task, and, as someone once said, “Who knew health care was so complicated?”), but we are trying to inspire people to commit to making the changes and to fix what they can control. We believe that if people take health care into their own hands, and commit to making small changes, the overall experience for all starts to improve.
In our last post, we featured the morning sessions planned for What’s the Fix? The afternoon sessions of the conference will keep the focus on individuals who are driving change through sheer determination; but also highlight institutions that are reacting to that change as well as people who are taking it upon themselves to learn all they can and generate healing in ways ‘the system’ can’t.
Kicking off the afternoon will be Andrew Richards, the Chief Technology Officer at the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine (Washington State University) Technology Incubator, which is focused on rural, underserved care and population health. He is building out capabilities that will differentiate the med school from anything else that’s existed in medical education. More than training the next generation of doctors, the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine will help define the tools, technologies and processes that doctors will use to better serve their patients and communities. The Technology Incubator is pivotal in that effort and according to Andrew, “We need to be building the medical school of 30 years from now, not 30 years ago.”
Joining Andrew will be Beto Lopez, Managing Director of the Design Institute for Health (DIH), a new collaboration between the Dell Medical School and the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Beto is passionate about the mash-up of design thinking and systems thinking and focuses his work at the intersection of design, business and rapid prototyping. Guided by the gestalt principle, Beto looks to reveal system conditions and behaviors so that a new breed of experiments, all built from a shared mission to improve how people experience and interact with their health, can be formed to help transform healthcare into something other than what it is today.
And then we unleash the moms! We’ve found moms have the incredible ability to network, to learn from each other, and to leverage a collective knowledge that’s greater than any one practitioner could have. We’ll bring together a panel of amazingly impressive moms who have each helped their kids heal and have also helped others along the way.
The moms panel is moderated by Beth Lambert, the author of A Compromised Generation and the leader of Epidemic Answers and Documenting Hope – two non-profit organizations focused on helping children recover from chronic issues.
The panelists include moms who have learned from other moms and now help others:
Jennifer Kozek, author of Healing Without Hurting, focuses on healing without medication. Jennifer is a board certified licensed psychotherapist with 17 years of clinical experience treating clients with Asperger’s, depression, anxiety, OCD and ADHD. Her award winning book was rated #1 New Release on Amazon in the category of Children’s Learning Disorders. Jennifer has seen the ADHD/Autism epidemic unfold in her own private practice and in her own home when Jennifer’s young son was diagnosed. She plunged into the world of safe and natural healing modalities outside of the pharmaceutical model and found much success. She became an expert in the field of nutrition and biomedical interventions for the treatment of these disorders. She is a national speaker conducting workshops around the country and is on the panel of nutritional experts at the National Autism One Conference in Chicago, IL.
Madiha Saeed, was trained as a western Doctor, but changed her practice to become more holistic in her approach to caring for her patients. Dr. Saeed, a board-certified integrative holistic family physician practicing in Illinois, is on the forefront of changing the face of medicine. She is a diplomat of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine and holds a diploma in homeopathy from the Center for Education and Development of Clinical Homeopathy. She is also the director of education at Documenting Hope, a national pilot healing program to reverse chronic disease in children to be documented scientifically and on film. Her book, The Holistic Rx: Your Guide to Healing Chronic Inflammation and Disease, is set to release in October 2017. Dr. Saeed’s enthusiasm is demonstrated in her numerous public speaking engagements and her growing international social media presence as HolisticMom, MD. She has had numerous articles published in Holistic Primary Care magazine, the nation’s largest holistic magazine, which called Dr. Saeed “an emerging voice for the next generation of holistic physicians.”
Amy Gleason is the Chief of Staff and Cofounder at CareSync. She began her career in nursing and quickly found that she loved technology and embraced that technology can improve health care. She took her love of technology and spent several years implementing and building Electronic Medical Record and Practice Management applications. In June 2010, her daughter was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder, which opened her eyes to a whole new set of challenges in the health care system. As a caregiver, she had a new role to play in keeping her daughter’s care organized, efficient and effective, and she draws on this experience at CareSync to help patients and their families have better coordinated care and improved health outcomes. Amy also proudly volunteers as the Vice President of Research for the Cure JM Foundation, a non-profit that funds research, raises awareness and supports families of children with Juvenile Myositis.
Closing the conference is Tami Rich. A mom who has been by her son Jamie’s side as he has lived through the horror of congenital heart issues since birth. Both are tremendously inspiring people who are out to help fix the system and make it better for people and we are excited to feature Tami and her experience.
Tami has a unique triad of health care experience, including work in strategic total quality improvement, organizational transformation, and the personal medical case management of her son. She is a customer-minded, innovative MBA and strategist; a consensus-builder who brings people with different perspectives and agendas together, fostering alignment across the healthcare continuum around common goals. Tami is an articulate and determined advocate for strategically-focused, goal-oriented, transformative change.
Our goals in highlighting these stories are to leave our participants (virtual and in-person) feeling inspired, empowered and maybe even a little riled up. The aim of this conference isn’t to generate more head-nodding about how health care isn’t patient-centered – it’s to highlight examples of patients taking control of their own care, and to activate a new wave of change-makers to challenge the status quo.
Ready to join us in the fix? Meet us online June 14 for the live-streamed conversations, ideas and commitments to fix health care. You can attend for as much or as little as you’d like, so tailor your day to engage during the sessions that most speak to you!
