Can Connection Be the Cure for What Ails Us?

Jun 27, 2024

The health care system in the United States is generally individualist, requiring people to acquire health insurance and find a personal physician who will prescribe medication as needed for physical ailments, or a psychiatrist who may prescribe an antidepressant for mental illness. Our health is viewed as separate from our environments and from each other, as well as from socioeconomic stressors such as financial insecurity.聽

Now, a new movement based on an old idea is taking hold: What if in addition to prescribing medication, doctors also prescribed activities that addressed our lack of connection?聽

Writing about 鈥�,鈥� as it鈥檚 called, is journalist Julia Hotz. Her new book is considered to be the U.S.鈥檚 first book exploring the science, stories, and increasing popularity of this new trend.

Hotz鈥檚 work has appeared in the The New York Times, WIRED, Scientific American, The Boston Globe, Time, and more. She helps other journalists report on the big new ideas changing the world at the Solutions Journalism Network, and spoke with 大象传媒 Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on 大象传媒 Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about The Connection Cure.

Sonali Kolhatkar joined 大象传媒 in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of聽大象传媒 Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute鈥檚 Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of聽Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice聽(2023) and聽Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence聽(2005). Her forthcoming book is called聽Talking About Abolition聽(Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women鈥檚 Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master鈥檚 in Astronomy from the University of Hawai鈥檌, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on 鈥淢y Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host鈥� in her 2014聽聽of the same name.