RWJF

This audio version of Take Us To A Better Place was narrated by Joniece Abbott-Pratt and Holter Graham. Featured stories by Madeline Ashby, Hannah Lillith Assadi, Calvin Baker, Frank Bill, Yoon Ha Lee, Karen Lord, Mike McClelland, Achy Obejas, and Martha Wells. Presented by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in collaboration with Melcher Media. This audio program was produced by John Marshall Media. Visit http://www.rwjf.org/fiction to learn about the stories, authors, and ideas presented in Take Us To A Better Place.

Having lost his wife to disease, ex-marine Guy, a rugged Samaritan in his small-town community, struggles to reconnect with his only child. It's not until he steps in to care for the neglected son of an opioid-addicted man that he learns emotional responsibility and the skills to rebuild his severed ties.

In 2079, a mysterious illness called grey pox is killing large portions of the population. When the illness finally reached the remote Pelican Island, a team of researchers including Audra Lee—whose own young niece has been affected—must muster all of their meager resources to help find a cure.

Harry and Dean are just starting their adult lives in New York. An encounter with Raquin, who was forcibly evicted from the apartment they now rent, illuminates the trauma of gentrification and the struggle to be heard and understood in today's world.

When a popular high school football player dies from a mystery illness, Glory, a reporter for a large online media conglomerate, is determined to get to the bottom of what happened before it spreads any further. But she finds herself up against the local sports culture and the conflicting goals of her employer.

On a space station near Jupiter, station manager Jixy discovers one of her friends, Greggy, an "augmented human," has been brutally murdered. A semi-mythical figure called Piecework has been blamed for similar attacks on other stations. Determined to protect the people on herstation, Jixy sets out to see if Piecework—or someone else—is responsible for the crime.

Isa, a woman with progressive hearing loss, is separating from her wife. It's not her decision. There's lots wrong in the marriage but also lots right, and she has developed a number of dependencies--many, in fact--around her hearing loss. As the marriage falls apart, Isa has to reconfigure who she is and how she finds support.

In a future society, two teens find out what happens when seemingly innocuous "community games" serve a more sinister purpose. It turns out that these popular means of social interaction are quietly eroding civil liberties and privacy as neighbors collect data on one another and report it to shadowy rulers and a power hungry elite.

Rita is a Syrian refugee whose family has escaped the conflict to Arizona—but not without a cost. Her mother was killed back home, and her father and brother carry bullet wounds. Facing xenophobia and racism at school and work, Rita and her brother struggle every day in the face of systems and individuals who fail to support refugees and immigrants.

Kyle and Bobby, long-lost lovers from different backgrounds, live in a United States where encroaching coastlines are wreaking havoc on health and well-being. When they reconnect, the disparities and inequities between their two worlds: a South ravaged by global warming and an eco-protected island in North Carolina are thrown into harsh juxtaposition.

This collection of stories will allow you to grasp uneasy topics related to common social determinants of health. These health-related fictional stories cover the impact of social standards such as war, displacement, poverty, isolation, discrimination, and many other forces that adversely affect health outcomes. We hope these stories will allow our listeners to identify the most longstanding public health problems and encourage others to advance public health worldwide. Visit http://www.rwjf.org/fiction to learn about the stories, authors, and ideas presented in Take Us To A Better Place.

Foreword by Roxane Gay - Take Us To A Better Place by RWJF

Opening - Take Us To A Better Place by RWJF

Psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author Esther Perel answers our question “what advice did you give your own children about developing healthy relationships?”

Enjoy this unedited conversation with psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author Esther Perel, who is recognized as one of today's most insightful and original voices on modern relationships. In the clip, RWJF’s Lori Melichar talks with Esther about how our relationships affect our health and how that has evolved over the course of time.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneering Ideas Podcast explores cutting edge ideas and emerging trends with the potential to improve health and health care for all Americans. In this episode RWJF senior program officer Paul Tarini connects with grantee Ted Smith, PhD, Chief of Civic Innovation in Louisville, Kentucky, to explore his work with Air Louisville. This program is using city-wide collaboration to gather real-time data as part of their mission to understand what contributes to health inequities in the city and how the data can be used to create policies and partnerships that will make the city of Louisville—and all cities—a healthier place to live.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneering Ideas Podcast explores cutting edge ideas and emerging trends with the potential to improve health and health care for all Americans. In this episode we explore the cognitive power of the brain through the lens of video games with Adam Gazzaley, professor of Neurology, Physiology and Psychiatry and director of the Neuroscience Imaging Center at UC-San Francisco, and Jane Lowe, RWJF senior advisor for program development. Listen in as they discuss Gazzaley’s work and what happens when you use neuroscience to develop healthy video games.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneering Ideas Podcast explores cutting edge ideas and emerging trends with the potential to improve health and health care for all Americans. In this episode we explore resilience and using mindfulness to manage stress with Amit Sood, MD, MSc, FACP, professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic College and chair of Mayo Mind Body Initiative, and Mike Painter, RWJF senior program officer. Together they discuss what Sood and his team are doing to improve health outcomes and quality of care through teaching compassion and utilizing the strengths of the brain.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneering Ideas Podcast explores cutting edge ideas and emerging trends with the potential to improve health and health care for all Americans. In this episode we explore a new cutting-edge idea with the potential to build a Culture of Health. Join us as we explore how virtual reality technology can be used to help build social good with Founding Director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, grantee Jeremy Bailenson and RWJF Senior Program Officer Tracy Costigan, and discuss Jeremy’s explorations in using virtual reality to build empathy and more.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneering Ideas Podcast explores cutting edge ideas and emerging trends with the potential to improve health and health care for all Americans. In this episode we explore a new batch of cutting-edge ideas with the potential to build a Culture of Health. We explore the potential for the collaborative economy (aka “the sharing economy”) to change how we engage with and experience health and health care. Next we reimagine medical education, where new online models are powering collaboration within and between medical schools, and we learn how “agile science” seeks to use research to spur discovery and adoption of healthy behavior change. Finally, we’ll hear one grantee’s personal vision of a Culture of Health where everyone has access to their personal health data.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneering Ideas Podcast explores cutting edge ideas and emerging trends with the potential to improve health and health care for all Americans. In this episode we explore a new batch of cutting-edge ideas with the potential to build a Culture of Health. We explore how technology can promote well-being by connecting us to our essential self; what our knowledge of social relationships—and social media—can mean for how we design our communities; and how institutions can create organizational cultures where health and socially conscious innovation thrive. Learn more about the ideas explored in this episode at: http://www.rwjf.org/en/blogs/culture-of-health/2015/03/wellness_in_a_networ.html

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneering Ideas Podcast explores cutting edge ideas and emerging trends with the potential to improve health and health care for all Americans. In this episode we explore a new batch of cutting-edge ideas with the potential to build a Culture of Health. We explore how technology can promote well-being by connecting us to our essential self; what our knowledge of social relationships—and social media—can mean for how we design our communities; and how institutions can create organizational cultures where health and socially conscious innovation thrive.: http://www.rwjf.org/en/blogs/culture-of-health/2015/01/unconventional_approaches_to_stress.html

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneering Ideas Podcast explores cutting edge ideas and emerging trends with the potential to improve health and health care for all Americans. This episode looks at innovations that ask, “What if?” We explore simple shifts in perspective, from doctors sharing notes with patients to rethinking how we help those in poverty, and we hear a historian’s take on building a Culture of Health. Learn more about the ideas explored in this episode at: http://www.rwjf.org/en/blogs/pioneering-ideas/2014/10/podcast_episode_6.html

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneering Ideas Podcast explores cutting edge ideas and emerging trends with the potential to improve health and health care for all Americans. This episode covers medical conspiracy theories, the ripple effects of not getting enough sleep, microbiomes and our built environment and ideas for measuring a Culture of Health. For more information about this podcast, please visit http://www.rwjf.org/en/blogs/pioneering-ideas/2014/07/podcast_episode_5.html.

In the fourth episode of RWJF's Pioneering Ideas podcast, we cover nurses innovating at the bedside, alternative marketplaces and up-cycling impacts on community health, our new data initiative Visualizing Health, and highlights from the TED 2014 master class led by entrepreneur-in-residence Thomas Goetz. For more information about this podcast please visit http://www.rwjf.org/en/blogs/pioneering-ideas/2014/05/podcast_episode_4.html

In the third episode of RWJF's Pioneering Ideas podcast, we explore the power -- and the burden -- of choice. What does our relationship with choice mean for our health and for the health care system as a whole? We also talk about the radical power of empathy and hear from Princeton students who are part of the next generation of health care innovators.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is back with Episode 2 of its Pioneering Ideas podcast, featuring behavioral scientist BJ Fogg, the Foundation's Entrepreneur-in-Residence Thomas Goetz, and other innovators working to transform health and health care. Get insight into the foundation's funding strategy and get inspired with ideas for creating a culture of health. Plus, a personal essay from program officer and physician Mike Painter on physician incentives.

Learn about groundbreaking research on the power of the placebo and how a platform called PatientsLikeMe puts health outcomes in patients’ hands. Also: weighing the pros and cons of making foundation proposals public to help ideas spread.