Chief Executive Officer Wizdom Powell, PhD, MPH, CMHC, joins the podcast to discuss how Unified Youth is reshaping mental well-being for young people through creativity. Drawing on her experience working with veterans and military families, Dr. Powell shares how the same principles of healing in community — what she calls “speaking to the wounds” — can help today’s youth remember who they are and reimagine who they can become. It’s a conversation about radical healing, belonging and the transformative power of art and purpose in building a healthier future for all.
Featuring:
Wizdom Powell, PhD, MPH, CMHC, Chief Executive Officer, Unified Youth
Host/Producer: Carol Vassar
Announcer:
Welcome to Well Beyond Medicine, the world’s top-ranked children’s health podcast produced by Nemours Children’s Health. Subscribe on any platform at NemoursWellBeyond.org or find us on YouTube.
Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:
Each week, we’ll be joined by innovators and experts from around the world, exploring anything and everything related to the 85% of child health impacts that occur outside the doctor’s office. I’m your host, Carol Vassar. And now that you are here, let’s go.
MUSIC:
Let’s go well beyond medicine.
Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:
I have with me today the incomparable Dr. Wizdom Powell. She is just a dynamo. Fresh in from California, she has returned to her home in Connecticut, not far, actually, from where I record. And she is an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut. Go Huskies. She’s also Chief Executive Officer of Unified Youth, and we’ve had her on the podcast before in her capacity as the former Chief Purpose Officer at Headspace. Dr. Powell, thank you so much for being here.
Wizdom Powell, PhD, CEO, United Youth:
Thank you for having me. It’s so great to be back.
Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:
So you have launched this new initiative. It’s a fabulous thing called Unified Youth. I want to have you talk about its birth process, its gestation process. What inspired you to create it and what need did you see that you perceived was not being met?
Wizdom Powell, PhD, CEO, United Youth:
Well, thank you for the question. Unified Youth was actually seeded by two corporate partners, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, and Booz Allen Hamilton. Both partners came together, actually, during a retreat that Manatt Health held, and within that retreat, they had a Shark Tank exercise trying to unearth ideas of issue areas that both corporate partners might invest in outside of their usual portfolio. And not surprisingly, youth mental health and well-being rose to the surface. And so those leaders then came together, they did a national search, and I emerged as the top candidate in that search process. And I was very excited and exhilarated by the opportunity to do work in an area for me that is so much more than just an intellectual exercise. I come to Unified Youth having also worked in communities and alongside young people for my entire career, and really trying to build solutions that address the whole of them.
So Unified Youth was created to reshape youth mental well-being in America because we recognized that the current system wasn’t built for the world or isn’t being built for the world that young people desire to grow up in or that they are actually growing up in. And I had watched and been a part of the choir that’s been preoccupied with conversations about trauma, woundedness, and the crisis in youth mental health. And I realized that all of the so-called elders and adults in the room were forgetting to think about who young people wanted to become. We’ve missed so many opportunities in the work with young people to embrace the kinds of solutions that really rise up to meet them.
And we also realized that we were missing some opportunities to work a bit more upstream to embrace lower-cost, scientifically proven methods that do more than just help young people navigate this crisis, but really approaches the issue from an angle that young people are reservoirs of untapped potential. And that if we could adopt approaches that cultivate the kind of foresight that is required to not only reawaken parts of themselves that are calling out for more expanded awareness, but also would awaken us to solutions that rise up to meet them at their highest intentions for radical healing.
So our approach centers creativity, play, and connection. And we think these three things are some of the most powerful and evidence-backed tools for healing that are often missed as luxuries. We also saw the gap between what youth actually need — belonging, purpose, agency — and what our systems provide. So Unified Youth just exists really to fill that gap by creating spaces where young people feel seen, heard, and supported in building their own futures. In that way, for me, Unified Youth feels so much more than just another nonprofit organization. We really are trying to spur a movement to build the infrastructures of care and wonder that every young person deserves.
Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:
You have a big job ahead of you. You have defined many issues. You have defined possible solutions. Where do we start attacking that gap and start narrowing that gap? It sounds like play, the arts have an involvement, connectivity. Talk about what you’re doing to start.
Wizdom Powell, PhD, CEO, United Youth:
Yeah, I mean, it is a big vision, but when you think about the wicked challenges of youth mental well-being, we recognize that one sector, one organization, one community can’t do this alone. And so for us, building a unified movement or using this opportunity to unify organization systems and structures really is not just a value and a vision. It reflects our belief that cross-sector collaboration and cooperation is the way to go. And I’m fortunate that while this is a big, hairy, audacious vision, that I’m seated alongside co-visioneers who see the opportunities the same. And so we start with building both the infrastructures at the national level to bring this vision to life, but also in an air-sea or air-land strategy kind of view, that we also work with community members who are closest both to the peril and the possibility. So we’re bringing together young people, families, educators, artists, funders, and healthcare leaders to co-create those solutions not in silos, but side-by-side.
And so unified to us means like the unity within, helping young people integrate all parts of themselves, creative, emotional, cultural, spiritual, but also uniting health systems leaders with education leaders and artists together so they’re working collaboratively to birth new possibilities. But it also means wrapping our arms around existing work. So the way that Unified Youth works most explicitly is that we work to build wonder ecosystems, which are safe, connected community supports where creativity is braided through organizations and communities, health systems, and service providers that support young people directly, and in education settings. We create learning co-laboratories in those communities so that we can foster shared learning and also reduce some of the redundancy of work that often happens when people aren’t talking together.
And then we also fund those grassroots and grass-seeds organizations in those communities in ways that help to sustain their existing work, but expand initiatives to incorporate other layers of creative approaches and wellbeing approaches that they may not have yet considered. That, to me, feels so incredibly important as a strategy, not just to lift up an organization that is going to bring something new, but to recognize that the good work is already happening. And what’s been needed in this space, as we both can appreciate, is a center force of gravity that helps to bring those organizations together so that we can work cooperatively to advance youth mental well-being, not just reduce the symptoms and challenges of behavioral health crises that we’re facing today.
Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:
So to me, it sounds like you’re embracing the community of youth, unifying as youth, families, organizations, non-profits, to really wrap your arms around a well-being mission and a well-being onus. Talk about how that shows up in the work that you’re doing, the programs, the culture of Unified Youth.
Wizdom Powell, PhD, CEO, United Youth:
Well, I think it’s important to give a hat tip, a nod, to ArtPlace America.
Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:
Okay.
Wizdom Powell, PhD, CEO, United Youth:
ArtPlace America was a nationally led investment in creative placemaking for economic and community development and revitalization. That effort, spurred by funders like the Kresge Foundation, Mellon, the Blank Foundation, came together to build and invest in vibrant artistic and cultural hubs around the nation with an eye towards more civic engagement and community connectedness. That strategy, the brilliance of creative place-making, is exactly what we’re bringing to bear on our work at Unified Youth, which is taking that really smart and population health approach and applying it to youth mental wellbeing. That looks like for us, as our first place on our roadmap in Los Angeles and building a wonder ecosystem there, working with partners from our strategic network to cultivate a community health improvement plan with young people and families from those communities, mapping the creative assets that exist in those communities, and creating a network whereby young people can access creativity and opportunities to express themselves creatively more readily and easily.
So think about a rapid referral network for artistic and creative endeavors, like that being established by our partners at Art Pharmacy, for example. So those kinds of resources, easily identifiable resources for young people and their families, mean that when young people want to find those outlets, they don’t have to go searching for them, that we create a way for them to be able to access those more readily. So that’s a problem of both raising the visibility, but also making sure that those resources are connected and that the referral processes to those organizations are facilitated by technological infrastructure, like what we’re building at Unified Youth. And then it’s about making sure that you partner with those organizations on the ground and listen and learn from them about what they truly need to be successful. What we’ve heard a lot from grassroots and grass-seeds organizations is that they’re doing the work, that they’re using the arts and creativity in all of its forms to support young people, but what they’re missing and lacking are the resources and supports for measurement, and evaluation, and storytelling.
And so those are two of the areas of capacity enrichment that we’re really focusing on. We know from the science of neural arts and neural aesthetics that when young people are exposed to opportunities for creative expression, we rewire neural networks that are associated with more imagination, awe, and better social and emotional regulation. But most organizations that are on the ground lack the resources to actually do the measurement that would tell this whole story about what they’re truly moving the needle on in the lives of young people. So having those resources be a part of our grant-making strategy is essential. We just don’t want to drop money from the sky as a national re-granting organization, but we want to wrap around those grants and dollars, real capacity enrichment that actually meets organizations where they are. And that means also being flexible about what we expect from grassroots organizations who are working with very limited resources.
But here’s the thing, we know that we can’t just arrive in a community ready to go without building the trustworthiness with partners on the ground. And it’s one of the reasons why we’re taking the long horizon of 10 years to build these wonder ecosystems in communities across the nation. Like ArtPlace America, we see the value of going deeper in place and making sure that we build the kind of therapeutic landscapes for young people that they deserve.
Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:
I’m hearing so much good that’s happening that you’re looking to achieve as you move forward with this. You’re fresh back from California. I want to hear a little bit more about the, is it the eco wonder system or the wonder ecosystem that you have started building out there? Tell me more about what you experienced when you were out there and what the vision is for that one in particular.
Wizdom Powell, PhD, CEO, United Youth:
Yeah, so for Los Angeles, what’s really amazing is that we know that every geography around the country that we’ve selected through our process, and I’ll tell you a little bit about how we are identifying those geographies, but we’re learning that to build a wonder ecosystem, you have to start with where the magic is already happening.
And we’re fortunate that in Los Angeles in particular, the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, led by our colleague Kristin Secoda and her team, have been working to build a creative well-being portfolio over a number of years. And they have amassed a network of hundreds of organizations in Los Angeles that are working at the intersection of creativity, youth mental well-being, and a future readiness. And so, building the wonder ecosystem there starts with us mapping out the strategy for our grant cycle. So as I mentioned, our intention and our plan is to fund 5 to 10 grassroots organizations that are in every wonder ecosystem. And we do that by looking for organizations that are working at the intersection of creativity, tech, mental well-being, and future readiness. And those organizations then get an opportunity, by invitation only, to apply for one of our grants. And so working with our partners on the ground who have the closest proximity to those organizations, with both developing the call for proposals and also mapping out our grant selection process, is how we’re starting.
We also, as I noted earlier, we want to get a sense of what’s happening in these communities. So we spent a lot of time meeting with grassroots organizations before we made our final selection of geographies, talking to those organizations, hearing more about what they needed, and determining where we might add the most value. So in Los Angeles, we also have the fortune of having partnership with Headspace, who are based in Santa Monica, but also work across the globe to ensure that mental health services are democratized, that they actually are at the forefront of expanding the mental health workforce through coaching. And so we talk with our partners there, and as we will do in every geography, about the kinds of initiatives that they thought would be most useful. And overwhelmingly, we heard we need to expand our mental health labor force to include young people who are prepared not just to respond to crises, but who actually have a path to professional credentialing and an opportunity to get deeper support, knowledge, and exposure that would help them help their peers.
So in Los Angeles, with our partners there and with Headspace, we are on course to launch the first peer mental health coaching training institute that will actually connect young adults, transition-age youth ages 21 to 29, to the certification program that Headspace runs, and to leverage that opportunity as a pathway to professional credentialing. We know that young people are not only clamoring for an opportunity to have their voices heard and to be elevated, but they also want to be a part of the solutions, right? They don’t want us to mount initiatives that are about them without them. And we’ve said that so long, but oftentimes we invite young people to tables, but we mute their mics. Or we invite them to tables to tell stories that are in a way that’s extractive, never replenishing what is lifted up for young people, even in the process of telling those stories.
So in this effort, not only will we have an opportunity to center youth voice in the design of the curriculum and the refinement of that curriculum for young people, but we’ll also be able to then take those young people who are trained in this coaching institute and place them back in their communities to be a part of the ground force that helps to elevate opportunities for young people to creatively express themselves and to get the kind of real-time mental health support that they deserve.
That, to me, feels so incredibly exciting, and so much more will happen in a wonder ecosystem because this work is designed to be built alongside community. So we’ll be bringing those community organizations together for convenings to plan to actually do some solutioning that moves beyond crisis management, but to think about how these organizations might come together to even birth new and unexplored opportunities for collaborative initiatives. And that to me feels incredibly timely, exciting, and I’m so inspired by what this first wonder ecosystem in LA will teach us, because we’ll also be able to take what we learn and create a scalable model that can be replicated across the nation.
Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:
That was going to be my next question. This sounds like it’s scalable. What’s amazing about what you’re talking about really fits in with the whole child health aspect of what we do here at Nemours and what we’re trying to move as a movement in and of itself across the nation, of kind of turning that ship around, and let’s attack this issue of youth mental well-being from the beginning. Let’s not just look at symptoms and say, “This is what we’re going to treat.” And that’s the harder part, to turn that ship around to a place where it is going to wrap the entire community, and it sounds like you’ve got so many opportunities for youth to become involved in the creative arts, to become part of the workforce. This, as you said earlier, it’s a big hairy, audacious goal. The involvement of youth is so key to this, isn’t it?
Wizdom Powell, PhD, CEO, United Youth:
It is. And in our work, we don’t just ask youth for input. We have a youth and family advisory council that sits alongside us that helps us co-create content that leads the efforts to help us design and vision the storytelling campaigns that we will be producing and that hold us accountable to the communities of young people and their families that we serve. We believe that young people have agency. They are, again, not just closest to all of the crises and challenges and problems, but they’re closest to the potential and the possibilities, and they’re ready to lead. That feels so critical in this moment when we are all trying to figure out what can we do to support young people. Within them lies so many of those answers, if we would just listen and not just listen to respond, but to understand.
Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:
And to provide opportunity.
Wizdom Powell, PhD, CEO, United Youth:
Yes, absolutely.
Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:
If we were to sit down and have this conversation about Unified Youth in five years, what do you hope will have changed? What do you want to see that will have been achieved? What will be transformed?
Wizdom Powell, PhD, CEO, United Youth:
Well, I envision that in five years, we will see wonder ecosystems flourishing across the country, local networks where creativity, community, and direct services providers intersect to cultivate the conditions for optimal mental well-being. And I think also what we will see is a generation of young people whose stories are not about the problems that they face, but about the possibilities that they are unlocking, not just with creativity as we know it within the arts, but creativity as a problem-solving set of skills, as the World Economic Forum predicts. Young people using their imagination, wonder, and awe to reshape the world, a world in which young people are seen as more than just a sum total of the wounds that they’re accumulating, but as reservoirs of wonder. And that to me will be the hallmark of success for Unified Youth. I hope that we can make it possible for every young person to be embedded in therapeutic landscapes or environments that see them whole and with systems working collaboratively to meet them where they are. And that to me is at their highest intentions for radical healing.
Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:
That collaboration part, that inclusionary part, is so key to all of this. I’m going to totally change the subject. We were just together in Florida at the Ginsburg Institute Symposium, and one of our colleagues said, “Oh, you have to talk to Dr. Powell about her work with veterans and military mental health.” That’s part of your background, part of your training. Talk about what drew you into that space. And then a little bit later, I want to make that connection back to Unified Youth.
Wizdom Powell, PhD, CEO, United Youth:
Sure. I’ve shared this story a few times, but it bears repeating here because I can’t talk about my work with veterans and their families without talking about the veterans in my own family network. My maternal grandfather was an incredible human being. He was a single father at a time when, certainly, black single fathers were not discussed. And when black fathers were discussed, they were demonized. But this was a man who actually raised most of his children on his own. After he left his career as a Marine, he served in the Korean War, and like many other black veterans during that time in our history, he faced a lot of obstacles and barriers within the service. Even as his love for his country drew him to the battlefield, he wasn’t always seen as a part of that fabric of the American dream, but he still persisted.
But he also perished prematurely from what we as population health scientists now call deaths of despair, which meant for me that my grandfather, who kept all of his emotions close to his vest, he was strong, stoic, and silent, really used some of those maladaptive coping behaviors that we know really robbed people of the essence of their humanity. My grandfather drank very heavily and, as a consequence, died of cirrhosis of the liver.
Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:
Oh, I’m sorry.
Wizdom Powell, PhD, CEO, United Youth:
And so every time I do veterans’ work, I think about him. I think about my brother, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. I think about my niece, who was an airman and who also served her country valiantly. I think about veterans as one of those populations that we celebrate when they’re on the field, but when they come home, we don’t always embrace them.
Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:
True.
Wizdom Powell, PhD, CEO, United Youth:
So I’m drawn to that work. I’m called to that work because of both my lived experience, but also my high respect for the duty, the honor, and the service that they’ve provided to our nation. Veterans have taught me a lot about radical healing, right? And they’ve taught me that healing doesn’t happen in isolation, that it actually happens in community. When service members return home from being deployed, they are often subject to a bunch of questions about whether or not they are mentally well or stable.
And what was happening at the time that I was in the Department of Defense, working alongside Secretary Leon Panetta, was that the post-deployment assessment process had a glitch in that matrix. If you indicated that you are having trouble with your mental health, your reunification with your family may be delayed. And we know that what service members need post-deployment most is community and support and love and all of the things that don’t happen sometimes when people are denied that immediate reunification. So those same lessons about supporting veterans in their remembering of themselves, remembering of the self, are exactly the kind of things that help to inform how we build Unified Youth, centering the opportunities for connection as vehicles for healing.
Creativity, in the way that we imagine it and the work that we do, again, isn’t just about art making and creative expression, it’s also about the opportunity to work together with young people in your community in ways that promote more sense of community and belonging. Because of the isolation that so many young people find themselves in, I find parallels between the isolation that the veterans often feel, especially post-military service, and what young people are seeking day to day as they look out into a world that rarely, rarely sees them as vital to communities. We walk by young people a lot in our world, the same ways we walk by veterans who have served our country. And so I see that work as intricately linked and connected.
Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:
During your time with the Department of Defense, you worked directly with some of these veterans. Are there any that stand out? I think I overheard you saying you even worked with some World War II veterans, which these days there aren’t too many left.
Wizdom Powell, PhD, CEO, United Youth:
Yeah, I mean, I think I learned my most valuable lessons, first of all, from all of our service members. And I want to thank them for the privilege of allowing me to sit with them in what is possibly the lowest, most vulnerable experiences of their lives. And I have to say the population that stood out for me most were the Vietnam-era veterans that I had an opportunity to work with.
And I’ll never forget, I was working within a VA system in the US, and for anonymity, I won’t name that system here, but I’ll say that in that system, I had the opportunity to work with veterans in the PCT clinic, in the HIOT Clinic, which stands for Hospital-Based Intensive Outpatient Treatment Clinic. And those clinics are places and spaces where you see some of our service members who are suffering with the most complex forms of PTSD and other behavioral health challenges. And I’ll never forget having a patient who had served in the Vietnam War and who I had a really hard time connecting with. This veteran would sit in my treatment room and be silent, wouldn’t say anything. Imagine 60 minutes of just silence, tense silence because he could not find the words. And realizing that I had to adopt a different set of strategies to actually support this person with speaking about the horrors that they had experienced.
And I will never forget two things. One, the supervisor who said to me, “He is speaking. You have to speak to his wounds.” And speaking to the wounds has become a mantra for me as I think about the challenges that individuals face when they’re facing trauma. And then the other thing was a day when we had finally gotten over the hurdle of our therapeutic alliance building, where we were now, he was talking, and I was beginning to understand him more; he was beginning to feel more comfortable with sharing when he brought in a picture of himself before the war.
In that moment, I realized that what human beings are seeking, both young people and our veterans, is an opportunity to remember themselves, meaning put back together the self that was there before the world came in to reshape it, before the war, in the case of veterans, came in to reshape it. And that helped me so significantly to understand the commonness in our experiences and really to understand how much of the healing work was really about that reassembling of who we are. And I do believe, just to thread the needle back to creativity, that creative expression helps us do that. It helps us to remember in terms of the things that we’ve experienced and the ways that we think about memory, but it also helps us put back together those parts of ourselves that have been broken by experiences that have exceeded our capacities. And every person deserves that.
Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:
Absolutely, absolutely. Dr. Powell, for anyone listening today who really wants to make a difference in ways maybe that you are or that I am, whether it’s for young people, veterans, in their own communities, where can they begin? Where should I start?
Wizdom Powell, PhD, CEO, United Youth:
Well, one of the reasons why Unified Youth is taking this sort of hyper-local approach to galvanizing resources for youth and families and communities is because we realize that, as my very dear friend Sean Dove reminds us that there’s no cavalry coming. For the young people in your community, there isn’t going to be some helicopter in the sky that’s going to drop down the resources for them. Today, especially, we all have to take up the shared responsibility and accountability for caring for the young people that are in our environments, in our communities, our schools, etc. Every child is your child. So the first thing is to own that shared accountability. As an elder in the village, I take that responsibility mightily that every child I see is my child and it’s my duty to do something in the world that would make it better for them.
The second is to support local grassroots and grass-seed organizations that are arts-based, creativity-based, working at the intersection of youth preparedness and mental well-being. Because young people, yes, are facing a crisis, but they also are working to become, to launch into adulthood, and they need a caring adult around them. So invest in the organizations that are investing in young people. Join Unified Youth in the work that we’re doing to build wonder ecosystems all over the nation. And you can do that by following us at JoinUnifiedYouth.org. Follow our work, amplify the stories of young people around you, and, more importantly, stay steady in this work because young people really will require so much more support in the coming years, given the kinds of social dilemmas that we find ourselves in. So just stand up for them. Mind the gap.
Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:
Mind the gap. Excellent advice. We’ll put that link in the show notes for people so people can learn more about Unified Youth and keep up with what you’re doing. Dr. Wizdom Powell, it has been yet a privilege again. You are an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut, go Huskies, and the Chief Executive Officer of Unified Youth. Thank you so much for being here.
Wizdom Powell, PhD, CEO, United Youth:
It’s been an honor. Thank you, Carol.
MUSIC:
Well beyond medicine.
Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:
My goodness. From working with veterans to serving youth to training the next generation of mental health professionals, Dr. Wizdom Powell is a leader and a true visionary. And we’re so grateful anytime she takes the time to join us on the podcast. And the same goes for you, our listeners and viewers. We so appreciate you. Thank you for being here.
If it’s happening outside the office of a medical clinician of any kind, and it affects children’s health, we’re talking about it here on the Nemours Well Beyond Medicine Podcast. Podcast Central for us is our website, nemourswellbeyond.org. There you’ll find all of the episodes that make up our series – today is episode number 163 – along with a place for you to share episode ideas you might have. Leave a voicemail on that website or send an email to [email protected]. The website also provides a chance for you to subscribe to the podcast and to our monthly e-newsletter. That website, again, nemourswellbeyond.org.
Don’t forget, the podcast is also available on the Nemours YouTube channel, your favorite podcast app, or by simply telling your smart speaker to play the Nemours Well Beyond Medicine Podcast. Our production team for this episode includes Cheryl Munn, Susan Masucci, Lauren Teta, and Alex Wall. Video production by Britt Moore, audio production by yours truly. On our next episode, we’re taking on the tough topic of child trafficking, what it is, who’s vulnerable, and how trauma-informed care can help. Please join us. I’m Carol Vassar. Until then, remember, we can change children’s health for good, well beyond medicine.
MUSIC:
Let’s go well beyond medicine.
