By Samuel Akyirem, PhD (candidate), MRes, RN
The Yale School of Nursing’s (YSN) Office of Planetary Health and Global Engagement hosted an inspiring transdisciplinary symposium, “Imagining a Healthier Planet: The Power of Creative Expression and Collective Healing,” on 9th October 2025. Held at Yale’s West Campus Conference Center, the event convened scholars, artists, and health professionals to explore how creative expression can serve as a catalyst for planetary healing.
The gathering was part of YSN’s broader commitment to advancing planetary health, an emerging field that recognizes the interconnectedness of human well-being and the environment. Through art, storytelling, and dialogue, the event invited participants to reimagine approaches to health and healing in the context of global ecological challenges. The presentation was not only an exercise of knowledge sharing but a call to action as Christine Rodriguez, DNP, RN, Associate Dean for Nursing Impact, aptly concluded: “Mother Earth is now waiting for us to save her”
A Call to Expand the Definition of Health
The event kicked off with welcome remarks by Yale University’s Vice Provost for International Affairs, Professor Sunil Amrith who described the importance of planetary health and his support for the interdisciplinary approach that Yale School of Nursing is undertaking around this topic with global collaborators.
YSN Dean Azita Emami, PhD, RN, FAAN, also offered a powerful introduction reflecting on the inseparability of human and planetary health. “If we are serious about improving human health,” she said, “we must look beyond traditional boundaries. We must recognize that human health and planetary health are inseparable. The air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we grow all depend on the health of the planet’s living systems. When those systems are in distress, so are we.”
Dean Emami emphasized that while data and science provide essential knowledge, they rarely inspire the collective action required for transformation. “Knowledge informs,” she observed, “but art transforms. It helps us feel our shared humanity and imagine what a healthier, more compassionate world could look like.”
Drawing from her two decades of research on music and dementia, she shared a story that shaped both her scientific career and her personal outlook. Years ago, during a family dinner, her father, then living with advanced dementia, sat quietly while Persian music played softly in the background. Suddenly, he began to smile, clap, and sing along. “It was the first time in two years we had heard his voice,” she recalled. Playing music for him just brought him back to life again. That experience inspired Dean Emami’s long-term research into the therapeutic effects of music for people with dementia. Her studies have shown that music not only evokes emotional responses but also influences physiological processes lowering stress hormones, regulating heart rate, and improving communication between patients and caregivers.
“Art is not metaphorical medicine,” she emphasized. “It is medicine physiologically, neurologically, and spiritually.” Her remarks set the tone for the afternoon: art and creativity, when integrated with science and care, are vital tools for fostering compassion and healing at every level, from individual patients to the global ecosystem.
Creative Expression and the Nursing Workforce
The first featured speaker, Deena Kelly Costa, PhD, RN, FAAN, Associate Professor of Nursing, delivered a compelling talk titled “Holding Space and Giving Grace: Creative Expression as a Way to Support the Nursing Workforce.”
Dr. Costa began by outlining sobering statistics about the state of the nursing workforce in the United States. “We also unsurprisingly have sky-high rates of burnout and other forms of psychological stress [among nurses],” she noted. Studies show that up to 50 percent of nurses report high levels of emotional exhaustion, and many contemplate leaving the profession altogether.
She described the emotional toll nurses carry often silently amid increasing patient acuity, understaffing, and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We hold space, we also give grace, and we have no problem doing it for our patients and communities,” she said, “but we have much harder time doing it for ourselves.” Dr. Costa’s research and practice highlight how guided art viewing, storytelling, art, and photography can create avenues for healing and resilience. Her presentation spotlighted initiatives that integrate creativity into healthcare, including “medical pauses” after traumatic patient events, “Code Compassion” debriefings, and guided art sessions that help nurses process grief and reconnect with meaning in their work. Dr. Costa concluded by highlighting our collective responsibility to each other and to the planet: “Because if we don’t do it, who will?”
Seeding a New Story for Planetary Health
The second keynote, delivered by Susan Prescott, MD, PhD, pediatrician, immunologist, artist, and founding director of the NOVA Network for Planetary Health, expanded the event’s theme from the personal to the planetary. In her multimedia presentation, “Seeding a New Story: Inspiring Planetary Consciousness for Personal and Collective Transformation,” Dr. Prescott wove together science, art, and systems thinking to explore how creativity can catalyze healing at every level, from microbes to mindsets.
Drawing on her transdisciplinary work at the University of Western Australia and the NOVA Institute’s Center for Planetary Consciousness and Global Flourishing, she described planetary health as “a solutions-oriented, transdisciplinary field and social movement” focused on understanding how destabilizing natural systems affects the well-being of all life. “Planetary health is not simply another iteration of environmental health,” she explained. “It takes a whole-of-society approach that considers the social and commercial determinants of health and justice and expands the concept of well-being to flourishing, for people and the planet alike.”
Dr. Prescott’s talk delved deeply into the biological and cultural dimensions of disconnection, showing how industrialization, processed diets, and chronic stress disrupt the microbiome and mirror our wider estrangement from the natural world. This “disbiotic drift,” she explained, links microbial imbalance to social and ecological instability. “Our current health crisis cannot be separated from the social, economic, and political systems driving dysbiosis at all scales,” she said.