Webinar | Community As Medicine

Struggling with workforce shortages? Curious about truly integrative bio-psycho-social-soulful care? Wondering how to integrate peers or coaches into your services?

Open Source Wellness (OSW) is an Oakland-based nonprofit with a mission of transforming health care and health outcomes in partnership with communities.

OSW can be understood as a “Behavioral Pharmacy,” delivering on the “Behavioral Prescriptions” that primary care, specialty care, and behavioral health providers offer to their patients who are struggling with (or at risk for) behaviorally-mediated conditions including depression, anxiety, social isolation, diabetes, and hypertension. OSW partners with clinical providers and payors to deliver its experiential “Community As Medicine” model, achieving striking clinical patient outcomes and generating revenue for FQHC’s and other clinical delivery systems. Utilizing culturally-relevant health coaches and peer leaders to support diverse and transdiagnostic populations, OSW represents a next-generation behavioral health solution and a new way of organizing clinical delivery services.

Come learn about this innovative approach, explore implementation models in behavioral health, ask questions, and get an experiential taste of the OSW methodology. 

When: May 18, 2022 at 10:00am PDT / 11:00am MDT / 12:00pm CDT / 1:00pm EDT

Presented by:

Elizabeth Markle, Ph.D., Co-Founder, Executive Director | Open Source Wellness

Benjamin Emmert-Aronson, Ph.D., Co-Founder, Director of Operations | Open Source Wellness

This event is free and open to all!

Speaker Information

Elizabeth Markle, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist, speaker, writer, researcher, and Associate Professor of Community Mental Health at California Institute of Integral Studies. Dedicated to multi-theoretical and multi-level approaches to individual and community health and healing, Elizabeth’s current area of study and innovation is around combining clinical expertise with social entrepreneurship to create sustainable, thriving cultures of health and wellness. She is the co-founder of Open Source Wellness, a nonprofit initiative offering experiential behavioral health and wellness via a “Community As Medicine” approach in collaboration with healthcare providers and insurers. Liz’s current quest is around creating intimacy at scale, creating solutions for authentic and nourishing human connection facilitated by technology.

Benjamin Emmert-Aronson, Ph.D., is a psychologist, researcher, and advocate. He earned his M.S. in Statistics from Columbia University and his Ph.D. in Psychology from Boston University. He co-founded Open Source Wellness, a non-profit nationally recognized for innovation in health. Open Source Wellness partners with underserved communities to transform healthcare and health outcomes, where people do the actual behaviors that produce good health: eat well, exercise, reduce stress, and connect meaningfully. Participants consistently see striking improvements in their health, including a 21-point decrease in blood pressure, a 57% decrease in depression, and a 77% decrease in emergency room visits. Dr. Emmert-Aronson speaks nationally on the importance of daily behaviors to create health, the ways that societal forces make it much harder for members of some communities to implement daily behaviors, and the health disparity this causes.