Donna Karan Event and the Future of Integrated Care: Conversation with Robert Duggan
Written by John Weeks
Donna Karan's New York City Event and the Future of Integrated Care: Conversation with Robert Duggan
Summary: When one thinks
of the power centers in the United States, one thinks of government,
finance and, well, show business. Integrated care was had seminal
events associated with these centers. The Institute of Medicine and White House
Commission reports. The formation of the Bravewell Collaborative of
philanthropists. This past month, the show business power center brought us a unique, invitational 10-day event. It was organized by Donna Karan as part of her Urban Zen Initiative. This
article explores some ideas and directions engaged there, through an interview with participant Robert Duggan. Duggan is a co-founder of Tai Sophia and is respected as both pioneer and an out-of-the-box thinker who keeps his eye on the prize of health creation. This article is planned as a precursor to an interview with Karan on why she created the event and where the work may be headed.
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Event visionary Donna Karan
If there is one ingredient sure to spice up the life of the average
soul in the United States, it is glamour. Whether one seeks it or not.
Those without the slightest interest in the barrage of faces and lives
pummeling us daily from magazines, TVs and the web, seem to number at
roughly that of surviving airitarians. I proved myself at home among
these multitudes a couple weeks back when I got news that fashion maven
Donna Karan
had assembled a powerful array of my favorite glam-types (Susan Sarandon, Uma
Thurman, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, plus) to support an Urban Zen Initiativewhich
would explore integrative medicine as a transformative agent. My leash was tugged.
I quickly tucked away my wounded pride at not having been invited, and
wrote up a brief Integrator article (The Healing Power of Glamour) on the unusual 10-day event. I got in touch
with Karan's people to set an interview. What did the event intend to
accomplish? Was it successful? That interview will, hopefully, be
forthcoming next week.
Meantime, I contacted a long-time colleague who I learned
had attended, Robert Duggan. Duggan is the co-founder of Tai Sophia,
a multidisciplinary wellness institution in Maryland which began as one
of the first acupuncture training schools in the United States. The school now offers multiple graduate degree programs.
Karan event partcipant Robert Duggan, president, Tai Sophia
Duggan
is known for thinking out of the box. I have found him particularly
valuable for his ability to keep his eye on healing and health
creation, rather than on the more sectarian interests that tend to
shape the lives of healthcare professions. Duggan shared his sense of the themes from his two days at the event. Integrator: Give us a feel for the event. I gather it was held in Karan's husband's studio.
Duggan: I sampled the first two days of a 10 day event. Each day had a different focus, a different conversation,
which was designed to surface distinct issues about a particular
dimension about the work of changing health care. They used open space technology to allow the entire audience to bring issues to the surface.
Integrator: No power point presentations, then?
Duggan: No. There were 8 or 9 people on
a dais being interviewed on each theme, but no talking heads. There were about 200
people in the room divided into 16 conversation groups. They used
electronic voting to harvest responses to the themes. Integrator: So who was present?
Duggan: The participants were a wonderful mix from hospice nurses and unit nurses to medical and nursing students to many patients to hospital presidents and college deans and NIH representatives. There was a focus on the
health systems, people from New York Beth Israel and Memorial Sloan
Kettering. And the Urban Zen Initiative had a real focus on a yoga training to bring yoga
and breathing and focusing into these hospitals. Integrator: So what was new? What struck you especially in your two days?
Duggan: I think of comments of six people that struck a theme for me. There was an Indian physician who studied in many countries, including Russia, who has a large integrated medicine center in London, Dr. Mosaraf Ali. He
kept talking about how important it is to "do your own M.O.T." In England, the Ministry of Transport (M.O.T.) requires regular auto inspections. Dr. Ali uses this phrase to remind people to do their own personal daily MOT test: check your sleep, exercise, hunger, pulse, tongue, etc. "If you don't do this you'll end up in the sick care system." To the extent that the public doesn't have its own MOT kit, we have a breakdown. Integrator: So, health care reform by staying out of the system.
"If we
don't re-think death and suffering and money, it will all go on the way
it is, the same old same old."
- Duggan on
comments of
Urban Zen presenter Robert Thurman
Duggan: A quite wonderful Buddhist scholar, Bob Thurmanspoke ...
Integrator: From Columbia University, Uma's Dad ...
Duggan: Yes. He's been doing this
work for a long, long time, since before Uma. He spoke at Tai Sophia in 1982. He said that we have to
deal with death and the acceptance of suffering. He said that we have
to get money out of our relationships to death and suffering. If we
don't re-think death and suffering and money, it will all go on the way
it is, the same old same old. Integrator: Any hints on how to get money out of it?
Duggan: That wasn't what he was
there for. He did speak again later in the week which I did not hear. He was just laying it out, that we need to deal with these
things differently than we do. I would think that he would say that a
relationship-based world is different than a transactional world and we
benefit from moving toward a relationship-based world.
Integrator: Who else?
Duggan: Donna acknowledged what a critical piece in her own healing Tony Robbinsplayed.
He spoke powerfully both days I was there and did a meditation in
Donna's apartment (where part of the event was held). He talked about
how it doesn't matter what techniques you use, if an individual doesn't
take charge of their own motivation, nothing shifts. A person needs to
grab meaning and understanding. Integrator:I do
think that many natural health practitioners, while they speak strongly
about the importance of empowering patients, that the focus is on
modalities and they fall back onto their modalities and therapies and
the empowerment focus can slide away.
Duggan: What Robbins was saying
reaffirms a study Claire Cassidy did here years ago. When you deeply
interview consumers of complementary medicine what you find is that
what they are buying is meaning. The high satisfaction is from their
gaining meaning in process with their providers. It's not about the
modalities so much as we think. It's a meaning shift they seek.
Another theme that was strong through the event was the morning training of yoga teachers by Rodney Yi.
They plan to teach yoga in hospitals. While the conference was going
on, this group of individuals were being given a training which will
allow them to go into hospitals and teach people to empty the mind, and
to breathe.
"Changing the system through getting people out of it.
"That was the central theme."
- Duggan
Integrator:So there was a practical focus on making a difference there, on the ground, in New York. Great.
Duggan: Another interesting comment was made by Frank Lipman, responding to a conversation about various models and systems, talking about functional medicine, about yoga, a third system about something else. Healers are caught with models and systems. These are all boats, he said, to get people to the otherside where they can do their own M.O.T. and stay out of the system.
Integrator: Anything more?
Duggan:In one of my discussion groups a nurse manager from a New
York hospital described putting in place a ritual at the start of
every shift ---- a ritual that reminds everyone that they are a team, helping
each other to serve the patients --- and to share any needs or concerns.
She said that this ten minutes each day has totally transformed the work
on her unit. I was impressed with hearing so many people describing
seemingly little interventions that have wide impact.
There was so much richness. Another speaker was Christiane Northrup. She is always wonderful and her theme was central. She said that she most helps by keeping her and her family well and out of the sick care system. Changing the system through getting people out of it. That was the central theme.
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Duggan: Donna acknowledged what a critical piece in her own healing Tony Robbins played.
He spoke powerfully both days I was there and did a meditation in
Donna's apartment (where part of the event was held). He talked about
how it doesn't matter what techniques you use, if an individual doesn't
take charge of their own motivation, nothing shifts. A person needs to
grab meaning and understanding.
