Compassion, Integrity and Secular Ethics Take a Seat at the Policy Table

Dr. Gerald Clum, DC, Director of the Center for Compassion, Integrity and Secular Ethics at Life University made a generous gift to the Board of Directors of the Integrative Health Policy Consortium–a 10-week Compassionate Integrity Training program for IHPC Partners For Health.

The Center for Compassion, Integrity, and Secular Ethics (CCISE) at Life University is dedicated to developing and promoting empirically-based programs that foster the human values most conducive to individual, social and environmental flourishing through research, dialogue, education and community empowerment.

Compassionate Integrity Training (CIT) is a multi-part training program that cultivates basic human values as skills for the purpose of increasing individual, social, and environmental flourishing. By covering a range of skills from self-regulation and self-compassion to compassion for others and engagement with complex systems, CIT focuses on and builds toward compassionate integrity. Values and concepts like compassion and integrity are based on a secular approach to universal ethics based on common sense, common experience, and science.

Compassion has been recognized as crucial to quality health care provision. Dr. Beth A. Lowen, MD, Assoc. Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Chief Medical Officer at the Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare, says, “Perhaps heightened public and professional awareness of the value and importance of compassion will enable us to raise our voices together to insist that compassion is a necessity, not a luxury, in health care.”

Additionally, former U.S. Senator William H. Frist, MD, and heart transplant surgeon recognized data from the groundbreaking book, Compassionomics by Stephen Trzeciak and Anthony Mazzarelli, demonstrating how compassionate care achieves measurable improvement to patient outcomes, fiscal health, and employee satisfaction. Thus, compassion drives revenue and cuts costs. This is key to driving legislation that is good for all.

U.S. Senator Cory A. Booker, in the forward to Compassionomics said that the authors “focus on the healthcare system to show us tangible and significant ways that compassion makes a crucial difference in health care. They show us that compassion isn’t just a nice idea, it’s a practice that when put into action improves lives.”

The 10-week CIT Training for the IHPC Partners For Health will promote expanded awareness and deeper understanding of the concepts that can be employed in policy work to keep us grounded in a basic orientation toward kindness, care, and compassion. Participants will be supported in developing deeper appreciation for the inherent value and innate potential as interconnected in common humanity. Practicing discernment and critical thinking while incorporating basic human values into decisions will lend to more humane and inclusive policy making.

IHPC is deeply grateful for the kind offer and support from Dr. Clum and Life University and is eager to leverage this important interpersonal training towards its continued work to address equity, diversity, and inclusion within the integrative health community.

“This project may not bear fruit for another 40 or 50 years, and you and I won’t be here to see it. But our generation must make a start…more sensible humanity may emerge, whose leadership too will be different.” H.H. the Dalai Lama

CIT (Compassionate Integrity Training) STARTS NEXT WEEK –SPOTS ARE STILL AVAILABLE FOR IHPC PFH OR THEIR MEMBERS!

• There are still slots available for additional participants!  Please let Tracy know if you are interested or someone in your organization and she will connect you with the CIT team.
• If you signed up but have not yet registered – please look for email from
  • Kristin Norton —kristin@kristinzo.com
  • Please register as soon as possible!