Sessions to explore mindfulness for better health

Underscoring the importance of mindfulness and community engagement will be core components of this year's All in for Health track at the Radically Rural summit in October. One main goal of the track is to "provide information and tools to help folks begin or get back to a mindfulness practice to deepen connection, reduce stress, and create healthier routines and habits," says Tricia Zahn, senior director for population health at Cheshire Medical Center in Keene. She adds that another goal will be helping healthcare workers engage with members of the community to provide care to a wider group. Zahn is co-leading the All in for Health track with Tammy Dwyer, director of community for Cheshire Medical Center. The track this year will feature four subsessions on Oct. 7 which will go over mindfulness, wellness, community engagement and even looking into the benefits of local food systems as a way to boost community health. The topics are pertinent to rural communities because they are aspects of healthcare that don't require a lot of resources and don't require a dedicated space or staff, Zahn says. "Exposure to and confidence in using new tools … can be incorporated into daily, busy lives without needing to restructure routines." In addition to covering a range of issues affecting rural healthcare, this track will speak to the overall theme of this year's summit, reckoning and reorienting, especially when it comes to the track's focus on wellness and mindfulness. "We are reckoning with the old map of emotions not being something we talk about – or a known factor that drives our decisions daily. We are reckoning with … assumptions that mindfulness is only for the few who frequent meditation centers," Zahn says. Now, she says, healthcare is reorienting, looking at how emotional intelligence is "for all" and working harder to provide patients of all ages with the tools they need to recognize their emotions and what causes them, label those emotions with "nuanced vocabulary" and regulate them in thoughtful, less reactive ways. "We are reorienting to taking care of our full health including our social, mental and spiritual health," Zahn adds. Subsessions The All in for Health track will be partnering with the journalism track for two sessions on the morning of Oct. 7, both looking at community engagement, and with the Land and Community track in the afternoon for a subsession on local food production. The final session on mindfulness will be led by the All in for Health track alone. The sessions will kick off at 9:30 a.m. at Heberton Hall in the Keene Public Library, 60 Winter St., with "Reimagining Community Hubs for Rural Health and Connection." The subsession, jointly led by the All in for Health and the Community Journalism tracks, will look at ways for both healthcare workers and journalists to make in-person connections with local community members via sites like telehealth hubs and mobile clinics. Participants will get a chance to engage in talks about how to build accessible "third spaces" – such as non-traditional spaces where community members often meet in person – to create a better connection between healthcare workers and residents. The next subsession, "When Communities Speak, What Happens Next?" at 11 a.m. in the same meeting place, will continue on the topic of connecting community and healthcare workers. Another joint effort with the journalism track, this subsession will feature a talk by speakers about five rural radio stations across the country that managed to structure their programming in order to respond to local concerns. Participants will then join a workshop where they can design their own projects aimed at addressing community needs. After a lunch break, the All in for Health track will meet up with the Land and Community track for a subsession called "Local Food Systems, Permaculture and Bioregional Resilience" at the Frost Free Library at 28 Jaffrey Road in Marlborough. In this session, participants will get to listen to presentations on bioregional diets and how to strengthen local food systems. This session, in particular, is a chance for participants from the health track to understand how "local food [impacts] our health and well-being," Zahn says. The last subsession, "Mindfulness to Improve Community Health Impacts," at 2 p.m., also at the Frost Free Library, will be led just by the All in for Health track. For this final session, track participants will join in a group discussion regarding mindfulness, including what it means and how to improve mindfulness within their small communities. The aim is to have participants leave the track – and the summit at large – with mindfulness tools they can take back to, and implement in, their local communities. For more information or to register for the summit, visit radicallyrural.org.