2013 December Newsletter

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Dear Friends,
I hope this Commonweal Letter finds
you well.
Commonweal is doing remarkably
well. The New York Times recently
published two articles on Rachel Naomi
Remen’s work with physicians. Oren
Slozberg has joined Commonweal as
Chief Strategies Officer. Kate Holcombe’s
Healing Yoga Foundation has joined
Commonweal. The Cancer Help Program
is as powerful as ever. We are launching
an effort to train leaders across the
country in a new project called Healing
Circles. And much, much more.
Let me briefly introduce Oren
Slozberg, our new Chief Strategies
Officer. Oren comes to us from a very
successful career at Visual Thinking
Strategies (www.vtshome.org/). His
mission is to help imagine and create
the future of Commonweal. Oren will
also direct a new institute in the area of
intuition, cognition, and consciousness.
Oren says:
It has become clear to me over the years
that only in bringing together wisdom
from deep and varied sources can we
ever make change. Without doing that
we have no chance of bringing real
healing to this planet we share. I’m
thrilled to be at Commonweal, where
this goes without saying.
Oren will be reaching out to many
of you—please feel very welcome to
reach out to him. His email is oren@
commonweal.org.
Enjoy the reports that follow.
With deep gratitude for your enduring
support,
Michael Lerner, President
D E C E M B E R 2 0 13
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INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF HEALTH AND ILLNESS
ISHI in The New York Times
by Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, Director
“Medicine’s Search for Meaning”
This fall, the ISHI staff and I were surprised to receive a call from David Bornstein
of The New York Times, who wanted to write an article about The Healer’s Art, ISHI’s
national program for medical students, and ISHI’s role in revitalizing the heart and
soul of medicine. We were even more astounded by the number of physicians trained
to teach The Healer’s Art to medical students around the country who were willing to
be interviewed for this article. Many of these faculty are professors and deans at their
medical schools, yet they took time from their demanding schedules to talk to David
at length and share how teaching The Healer’s Art has profoundly impacted their
teaching, their relationships with their students and patients, and their lives.
The article, enriched by this first-hand heartfelt experience of the course from both
faculty and students, caused a flood of emails to ISHI from many hundreds of people
from across the United States and the world. In the first week after it was published,
260 people posted lengthy and often highly personal responses to the article on
The New York Times website. “Medicine’s Search for Meaning” became the #1 most
frequently emailed article published in The New York Times that week.
A Follow-up Article: “Who Will Heal the Doctors?”
We were simply stunned when the response to the first article was so great that a
second piece was published the following week. Within a few days of being published,
another 500 readers posted passionate opinions and first-hand stories, providing a
sobering view of our medical system from insiders working in today’s healthcare system.
In the closing, Bornstein courageously posed the following:
Could physicians come together to overthrow the current order—to start a movement to,
say, Occupy Medicine? If they did, what would be the unifying cry? Down with health
insurers? Tort reform or bust? Or would it begin by expressing the thing that is most
precious to them that has been lost: the opportunity to practice medicine in a way that is
worthy of their dedication and love. Reclaiming a sense of meaning in medicine could be
the first step to rescuing the profession.
Perhaps this is an idea whose time has come.
To read the articles and reader responses, please go to: www.ishiprograms.org/nyt
For more information about ISHI, please go to: www.ishiprograms.org
ISHI thanks Kalliopeia Foundation, the Growald Family Fund, RSF Social Finance,
The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, anonymous donors, and many individual donors
for their generous support of ISHI’s work.
Healing Circles
and the Commonweal
Cancer Help Program
by Michael Lerner
October marked our 173rd Cancer Help
Program retreat. Once again it was
a deep and powerful experience. For
decades we’ve wondered how we could
“bottle” CCHP and make at least part of
the experience available to people who
cannot attend the retreats. This year
we are going to try! We’re launching a
project called Healing Circles to train
leaders to offer Healing Circles in their
communities. Here is the concept:
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Healing Circles can be offered
either as a day-long intensive or as
an ongoing curriculum of weekly or
monthly support groups.
The four core lifestyle components
are: eating healthy and tasty foods,
practicing yoga and meditation,
finding love and support, and
getting good exercise.
Cross-cutting these four lifestyle
practices is an experiential learning
curriculum: understanding choices in
healing, in medical therapies, in pain
and suffering, and in death and dying.
Additional leadership seminars will
cover the craft of support groups, the
uses of the healing arts, massage for
people with cancer, and leadership
skills in developing the entire program.
As demonstrated by Dean Ornish’s
pioneering work, Healing Circles
methodology is transferable to a wide range
of other health issues, such as heart disease
and diabetes. We focus initially on cancer,
but we welcome leaders who want to apply
the method in other health conditions.
The curriculum will be “open source”—
we do not claim and do not believe we
have the only good ways to follow the
four lifestyle practices. We will learn from
2
experience about how the program may
be adapted in different settings—hospitals,
yoga centers, churches, and living rooms.
We intend to put the entire curriculum
online, free of charge. At the same time,
we will offer on-site intensive trainings
at Commonweal, open to all, on the
theory that leaders in this work may be
cancer survivors and others who have
leadership skills but not specific training
in psychotherapy, yoga, or medicine.
I will be directly involved in
developing the overall program. Kate
Holcombe of Commonweal’s Healing
Yoga Foundation will lead the training
retreats. Kate has already conducted one
retreat and we’ve scheduled two more
for 2014 (March 18–23 and September
23–28). Rebecca Katz of Commonweal’s
Healing Kitchens Institute will provide
the diet and nutrition component. We
will draw extensively on CCHP in the
experiential learning curriculum, and also
on the end-of-life podcasts we have been
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December 2013
doing for The New School. We will draw
on the remarkable body of work Rachel
Naomi Remen has created at the Institute
for the Study of Health and Illness. Kyra
Epstein, Coordinator of The New School,
will lead our ambitious effort to make the
entire curriculum web-based.
Above all, we will turn to our
Cancer Help Program staff and alumni
community for wisdom, support, and
participation as the program develops—
and to those of you drawn to this project.
Shelia Opperman, a CCHP alumna
and key special projects staff member,
will coordinate the entire project. If you
would like to participate in the training,
want more information, or would like
to contribute in other ways, please
contact Shelia (sopperman@mac.com/
925-324-3076).
We could not continue the Cancer
Help Program—nor build Healing
Circles so many more people can
experience its benefits—without the
extraordinary support of CCHP alumni
and friends. The Cancer Help Program
is at the heart of Commonweal’s work. We ask you to continue to support this
remarkable 28-year journey.
Please go to www.commonweal.org/
program/commonweal-cancer-helpprogram/ for more information about the
Commonweal Cancer Help Program.
Kate Holcombe, Director, Healing Yoga
Foundation, with Chinna (left) and Geeta
(right), found under a fruit cart in India.
The Commonweal Cancer Help Program
is supported by generous grants from the
Morning Glory Family Foundation, the
Alberta S. Kimball–Mary L. Anhaltzer
Foundation, The Lia Fund, RSF Social
Finance, Barb’s Race, Vineman, Inc., and
individual contributions from CCHP alumni
and other Commonweal friends.
T H E
N E W
S C H O O L
A T
C O M M O N W E A L
A Conversation with Malcolm Margolin
by Michael Lerner
Malcolm Margolin was born in a Jewish
neighborhood in Dorchester outside
Boston in 1940. He was a dreamy child
with his nose always in a book. School
bored him. A piercing intelligence pushed
him forward. He graduated from Harvard,
married his Radcliffe girlfriend, and
ultimately found himself in a VW bus
he bought for $300 headed to California
from his home in New York City. After
many wanderings he settled in Berkeley
and began to make a living for his
growing family as a writer.
Malcolm decided to write a book about
California Native Americans. He thought
it would be an easy, short book about
a simple people about whom little was
known. But months stretched into years as
untapped research treasures opened before
him. He finally published The Ohlone Way:
Indian Life in the San Francisco – Monterey
Bay Area. The book became a classic and
continues to sell more than 35 years after
its publication. A few years later, Malcolm
published The Way We Lived: California
Indian Stories, Songs & Reminiscences. Later
still he began a quarterly magazine, News
from Native California.
Malcolm did more than write about
California Native Americans. He
passionately pursued friendships with
them. Malcolm became a witness to
the entire history of California Native
American peoples—the 500 tribes with
more than 100 languages that filled
California for millennia before the arrival
of the white man. He became a witness
to the utter destruction of their ways of
life. Even more remarkable, he witnessed
the rebirth of Native American cultures
built on fragments of the remains of
what had not been obliterated. Malcolm
carries this history as passionately as
anyone else alive.
Malcolm didn’t just write books—he
printed and published them. He became
the publisher of Heyday Books, a
renowned small press that has scraped by
financially for decades while publishing
an astonishing array of exquisitely
beautiful volumes.
On October 8, Malcolm sat down
for a New School conversation with
in the counter-culture yet held ourselves
separate from it. We were both driven
by a boundless intellectual curiosity. We
both bore witness to the holocaust of
natural and human life that our time has
wrought. And we’re both still at work,
with no intention of stopping, 40 years
after our wanderings began.
Malcolm quotes the great
anthropologist Clifford Geertz as saying
that anthropology is “deep hanging
out.” “Deep hanging out is my spiritual
practice,” Malcolm says. What a practice.
The conversation with Malcolm
is one of more than 150 remarkable
podcasts on our beautiful new website;
Malcolm became a witness to the entire history
of California Native American peoples.
Commonweal’s Steve Heilig and me
before a room filled to capacity with his
friends and admirers. Chatting with him,
I discovered the many parallels in our
lives. We were both born to Jewish fathers
named Max. We graduated from Harvard
a year apart. We left homes in New
York to drive with our partners to San
Francisco. Malcolm settled in Berkeley,
I settled in Bolinas. Heyday Books and
Commonweal were founded within a few
years of each other. We both stuck with
these eccentric organizations through
difficult times. We were both immersed
we invite you to look and listen (www.
tns.commonweal.org). To read Malcolm’s
books on California Native Americans
and to hear him talk about his life
work will change your understanding of
California forever.
TNS would not be possible without the
support of Kalliopeia Foundation, The
Whitman Institute, Bet Lev Foundation,
Oak Foundation, West Marin Fund, and
individual contributions from hundreds of
TNS supporters. Thank you!
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Healing Kitchens Institute
by Rebecca Katz, Director
Rebecca Katz
I believe in the power of food to
heal—both physically and emotionally.
Chemotherapy can destroy cancer
patients’ taste buds, turning foods they
used to love into bland gruel—but
healthy, nourishing meals can satisfy
even those who, as a result of disease,
have no appetite.
My journey at Commonweal began
with cooking at the Cancer Help
Program. I was a trained chef, but
terrified nonetheless. At my first retreat,
just as the first bile of panic started
rising, I heard a familiar voice in my
mind. It was the voice of a woman
called Sugar whom I had met briefly
many years before.
Sugar had plopped down next to
me at a café, unannounced, indeed,
uninvited, and asked me what I did.
I blathered a long-winded culinary
version of my Holy Grail, which
Sugar—an oracle with a burger and
fries—chopped down to size between
greasy bites. “You’re not just a chef,
you’re a soul awakener,” she clucked.
“You, my dear, have the opportunity
to allow people’s souls to be nourished.
You are the catalyst. Through cooking,
you can free people from the weight
of their daily thoughts and pain. You
can connect them to a higher beauty
through food.”
I remember staring, stunned at
this Socrates slathered in Heinz. She
grinned like a pixie, dabbed at the
corners of her mouth with a napkin,
got up, and turned around just before
she exited the café. “Tasty food,” she
announced to the assembled in the
restaurant, “restores the soul.”
Fast forward to the present. The
question of taste and nourishment is at
the center of the plate as the Healing
Kitchens Institute teams up with Fredi
Kronenberg, PhD, to educate the staff
at Stanford Cancer Center and Stanford
Hospital about the eating challenges
faced by cancer patients. Science will
meet culinary alchemy as we present
various ways of combating transient taste
changes, using combinations of foods
and spices to improve nutrition. Perhaps
now we can verify through research what
I heard in that restaurant many years
ago: that food can truly restore and heal
us, even in our most vulnerable physical
and emotional states.
To learn more about the Healing Kitchens
Institute at Commonweal, please go
to: www.commonweal.org/program/
healing-kitchens-institute/
We are grateful to the Bellwether Foundation,
the Morris Schapiro and Family Foundation,
and several individual donors for their
generous support of HKI.
“You, my dear, have the opportunity to allow people’s souls to be
nourished. You are the catalyst. Through cooking, you can free
people from the weight of their daily thoughts and pain. You can
connect them to a higher beauty through food.”
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December 2013
The Collaborative on Health
and the Environment (CHE)
by Elise Miller, Director
“Brett is a typical nine-year-old boy who lives with his
mom, Karen, in an urban area in southern California.
They live in an apartment near a busy street, and Brett
takes the bus to public school. He plays several sports
including baseball, soccer, and basketball, and likes to
go out with his friends. Unfortunately, like many typical
kids today, Brett has asthma….”
This is the beginning of one of six
fictional cases that comprise an
innovative new resource called A Story
of Health. Maria Valenti, CHE’s Healthy
Aging and Environment Initiative
coordinator, and Ted Schettler, CHE’s
science director, are spearheading
the project in partnership with the
Agency for Toxic Substances and
Disease Registry and the University
of California, San Francisco (UCSF)
Pediatric Environmental Health
Specialty Unit. Using a “family reunion”
scenario as the portal, A Story of
Health is designed to convey complex
concepts in the latest environmental
health science about multiple influences
on health, such as natural, built,
chemical, food, economic, and social
environments. This approach allows
for “portraits” to emerge about family
members and friends who have a range
of health problems—including asthma,
neurodevelopmental disabilities,
diabetes/obesity, childhood leukemia,
infertility, and cognitive decline.
The stories will be described in the
form of an interactive e-book using
narrative, sidebars, pop-up boxes,
illustrations, graphics, videos, and
links to additional resources and key
journal references. This first-of-itskind publication is expected to be
available next year and will also serve
as the basis for an online Continuing
was to reduce her carbon footprint and
dependence on toxic transportation
industries. She now pedals to most of her
shopping, errands, and entertainment—
and only used one tank of gas over an
entire year. Earlier this year, she paused
for this photo during her 10,000th mile
of pedaling. Inspired by Nancy, the rest
of us are trying to do better walking our
talk (so to speak); but keeping up with
Nancy, whether doing Internet research
or pedaling to get our groceries, is a very
high bar to achieve.
Education (CE) course designed for
health care professionals. For more information about CHE’s work,
Telling the story of environmental
please see: www.healthandenvironment.org
health science to key decision makers
is also a CHE priority. To this end,
CHE is deeply grateful to the following
three colleagues on CHE’s core advisory
for their generous support of our work:
committee were selected as fellows
Bellwether Foundation, The Jacob and Valeria
for the 2013-14 cycle of Reach the
Langeloth Foundation, The John Merck
Decision Makers, an initiative of UCSF’s
Fund, Johnson Family Foundation, Passport
Program on Reproductive Health and
Foundation, Wallace Genetic Foundation,
the Environment. They include Karin
Boston University/NIEHS-funded Superfund
Russ, coordinator of CHE’s Fertility &
Research Program, two anonymous
Reproductive Health Working Group;
foundations, and individual donors. Sarah Howard, coordinator of CHE’s
Diabetes–Obesity Spectrum
Working Group; and
Nancy Hepp,
Sharyle Patton, director
CHE’s research and
of the Commonweal
communications
Biomonitoring Resource
coordinator, pauses
Center. The fellowship
during her 10,000th
mile of pedaling.
trains scientists, community
groups, and health care
providers to effectively
promote science and healthbased policies at the U.S.
Environmental Protection
Agency.
Nancy Hepp, CHE’s
research and communications
coordinator, exemplifies
the lifestyle that CHE’s
work supports. Nancy
started riding her bike in
early 2011 after more than
a 20-year hiatus. Her goal
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December 2013
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A N T I B I O T I C
R E S I S T A N C E
U P D A T E
A Breakthrough at Last?
by Steve Heilig, MPH, Director of Public Health and Education, San Francisco Medical Society
and the Collaborative on Health and the Environment
True progress usually—no, almost
always—takes patience and
perseverance. In our last newsletter,
we reported on the ongoing effort
to reduce disease-causing bacterial
resistance to antibiotics, and how
Commonweal, under the leadership
of former Advisory Board Chair
and public health icon Dr. Phil Lee,
had contributed to this effort. As if
on cue, a new flurry of activity on
this topic is underway—some of it
potentially quite positive.
In a nutshell, the issue is the
Darwinian race between our antibiotic
medicines and bacteria’s ability to
develop resistance. Overuse in medical
settings is one culprit, but mass
overuse in meat production—wherein
three-quarters of all antibiotics
California Launches First-of-Its-Kind
Safer Consumer Products Program
by Davis Baltz, Special Projects Advisor
On September 26, 2013, the state of
California launched its Safer Consumer
Products regulatory program. In
development for five years, the program
breaks important new ground in the
chemicals policy arena. For the first
time, a local government will require
companies that use toxic chemicals
in consumer products to answer a
heretofore unasked but fundamental
question: “Is the presence of this
chemical in my product necessary?” In
another first-of-its-kind innovation, the
program goes on to require an assessment
of alternatives to harmful substances.
The goal of California’s initiative
is to reduce the disease burden of
Californians by driving chemicals
known to be harmful to health out
of consumer products. All people
are regularly, if not daily, exposed to
chemicals in goods such as personal
care products, baby toys, household
cleaners, and chemicals commonly
used in workplaces. It is expected that
many problematic chemicals will be
voluntarily removed from products by
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December 2013
produced are used to promote
animal growth—is increasingly
seen as a serious contributor to the
problem. Commonweal co-convened
a conference at the San Francisco
Medical Society a decade ago that
helped spark a reinvigorated push to
remedy this problem. The AMA
continued on page 9 >
we have taken the lead in analyzing,
and commenting upon, the many
proposed versions of the program during
its development. Furthermore, we have
organized to build political support for
the program, which has faced intense
opposition from the chemical industry.
As is unfortunately the case with
many worthy programs in our current
era, resources will be an issue. The
implementing agency, California
Environmental Protection Agency’s
Department of Toxic Substances Control,
needs a funding mechanism that will
enable it to mount a robust program.
Commonweal will continue to track and
support this program as it rolls out.
manufacturers to avoid the prospect of
being singled out, listed, and regulated.
We have known for years through
biomonitoring studies that humans now
carry, in their own tissues, measurable
levels of hundreds of industrial chemicals,
pesticides, and metals—a chemical body
burden for the species. We also know
these chemicals cross the placenta and
expose the fetus to developmental threats
in utero because they are
found in umbilical cord
blood. Many of these
substances have been
linked to diseases that
are widespread. These
chemicals do not belong
in our bodies.
Commonweal has
been deeply engaged
in the development of
this new program from
the start. As a founding
member of the statewide
coalition Californians for
a Healthy and Green
Davis Baltz on the Ganges at Haridwar, India, March 2013
Economy (CHANGE),
The End of an Era for Commonweal
by Heather Sarantis, Women’s Health Program Director
After nearly a decade of Commonweal
being a core leader of the Campaign
for Safe Cosmetics national coalition,
we recently ended our involvement on
the steering committee. The campaign
continues without us through Breast
Cancer Fund and other organizations on
the steering committee. We wish our allies
well with the next chapter of the work.
Commonweal was involved long
before most people knew that there
was lead in lipstick or formaldehyde in
baby shampoo—in fact we were one of
the founding members of the campaign.
Charlotte Brody, Commonweal’s former
Executive Director, was at the early
meetings with Breast Cancer Fund,
Clean Water Action, Women’s Voices
for the Earth, and other organizations
to launch the campaign. Charlotte
played an important role in setting both
the strategic direction of the campaign
as well as the tone. This is one of the
few campaigns that was simultaneously
pressuring the worst-offending companies
to change, working with thousands of
small businesses to build the market for
safer products, and pushing for both state
and federal legislation to reform the
industry. We used creativity and sass to
push on all fronts and have a lot of fun.
Charlotte was instrumental in helping
build this foundation and set the compass
for all the work that was to come.
I have also been involved for many
years—first when I was working at Breast
Cancer Fund in the early days of the
campaign, and now for the past five years
at Commonweal. I was the lead author
on many of the campaign’s reports—No
More Toxic Tub: Getting Contaminants
Out of Children’s Bath & Personal Care
Products; Market Shift: The Story of the
Compact for Safe Cosmetics and the Growth
in Demand for Safe Cosmetics; Retailer
Therapy: Ranking Retailers on Their
Commitment to Personal Care Product and
Cosmetics Safety; and others.
Commonweal is proud to have
Together, this coalition helped build
been part of this extraordinary effort,
a national conversation about the lack
both for the change we have helped
of safety standards for cosmetics and
make happen as well as for the deep
many other personal care products. Now,
friendships and professional respect
hundreds if not thousands of articles
we have with our colleagues on the
have been written about personal care
Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. We
product safety. Federal legislation has
couldn’t be prouder of having been part
been introduced to reform the industry,
of this little piece of history.
and the market for safer products is
expanding rapidly.
For more information about the Campaign
One of our greatest accomplishments
for Safe Cosmetics, please go to
was in 2012 when Johnson & Johnson
http://safecosmetics.org/
agreed to reformulate all of its baby
and adult products to eliminate some
of the chemicals of greatest concern. In
September of this year we reached two
more significant milestones. First, Proctor
and Gamble announced it would stop
using triclosan and diethyl phthalate in
all of its products globally, two chemicals
the campaign has been calling
for an end to their use for many
years. A few days later Walmart,
the largest retailer chain in the
world, committed to ending the
use of up to ten toxic chemicals
in all of the consumer products
sold in its stores, including
cosmetics, beauty and personal
care products, and household
cleaning products.
Victories like these are
remaking the marketplace. Each
time multinational corporations
make commitments to better
safety standards, it pulls the rest
of the manufacturers and retailers
to follow suit. Slowly but surely,
the safety bar is being raised. It is
a real testament to the power of
the grassroots base that has been
growing with the campaign over
these many years. Customers are
sick of being sold bad products,
and the companies are finally
Heather Sarantis in the Amazon basin in Peru
really, really listening.
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Commonweal
Biomonitoring
Resource Center
by Sharyle Patton, Director
In the past few decades, fighting fires has become more
dangerous. I’ve heard many firefighters voice concerns about
going into buildings where the heat of the fire is releasing
hundreds of chemical substances from the synthetic materials
used in today’s building materials and household goods.
Firefighters want to know if their gear is providing adequate
protection, whether the chemicals being released are ending
up in their bodies, and whether the cancers found at elevated
levels among firefighters are being caused by the array of toxic
chemicals they are likely to encounter on the fire ground.
Difficult questions, but at a recent
national meeting of the health and
safety officers from the International
Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF),
I had the opportunity to discuss with
firefighters how biomonitoring has been
used to measure firefighter exposures
and how this information might be used
to knock back illnesses associated with
these exposures. Biomonitoring data can
be fed into policy initiatives that will
limit use of toxic chemicals in building
materials and contents, and in informing
improvement of firefighter gear and
firefighting techniques required to fight
the hotter, smokier, and more toxicsladen fires of the 21st century.
Biomonitoring for the presence of
chemical flame retardants in the bodies
of firefighters informs another story as
well. Although the number of building
fires is decreasing, the number of
firefighter deaths is not. The presence
of flame retardants in building materials
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December 2013
and contents can create a hotter and
more smoke filled fire ground. Ironically,
many chemical flame retardants designed
to make firefighting safer are having the
opposite effect, and their presence in the
bodies of firefighters and in fire station
dust indicates the ubiquitousness of use
and exposure.
The continuing collaboration of IAFF
and the Commonweal Biomonitoring
Resource Center (CBRC) on
biomonitoring activities has produced
a website where firefighters can learn
more about toxic chemicals. CBRC will
be providing periodic updates on toxic
chemical research relevant to firefighters
as well as policy updates (www.iaff.org/
HS/SubstanceExposures/index.htm).
Our next firefighter three-year
biomonitoring study, funded by the
California Breast Cancer Research
Program, will focus on women
firefighters in the San Francisco Bay
Area. The collaborative team charged
with designing and implementing the
study includes Tony Stefani from the
San Francisco Firefighters Cancer
Prevention Fund; Rachel MorelloFrosch, UC Berkeley; Ruthann Rudel,
Silent Spring Institute; Heather Buren,
Women Firefighters Service; and Connie
Engel and Nancy Buermeyer from Breast
Cancer Fund. I’m very pleased to be part
of this team as well.
For more information about the
Commonweal Biomonitoring Research
Center, please see www.commonweal.org/
program/biomonitoring-resource-center/
Sharyle Patton with friends, Raffi and Leo
J U V E N I L E
J U S T I C E
P R O G R A M
Adolescent Development
and the Law: New Findings Drive
Justice System Changes
by David Steinhart, Director
A new frontier in juvenile justice is
being defined by changes in law and
policy that incorporate the science of
adolescent development. Increasingly,
courts and legislators have adapted to the
research-based principle that children
are developmentally different from
adults. The most notable evidence of this
change may well be the series of recent
United States Supreme Court decisions
banning the death penalty and lifewithout-parole sentences for individuals
whose crimes were committed while they
were under the age of majority.
The National Academy of Sciences
has collected the research on adolescent
development in an extensive 2012
report entitled, “Reforming Juvenile
Justice: A Developmental Approach.”
This excellent work tells us a lot about
adolescent behavior, delinquency, and
the justice system. Some of the key
findings documented in the report are:
■■ Adolescents are considerably more
impulsive and prone to take risks
than adults. Compared to adults,
adolescents are less able to make
sound judgments or to regulate
their behavior based on future
consequences.
■■ Adolescent brains do not achieve full
development until individuals are in
their mid twenties.
■■ Adolescent behavior is strongly
influenced by family factors (such as
lack of parental guidance) and socioeconomic factors (peer association
and approval, quality of schools,
racial discrimination, growing up
poor) that explain and contribute to
crime and delinquency.
Both the research and common sense
tell us that children and adults are
different. Nevertheless, the law has been
slow to incorporate these differences in an
intelligent and comprehensive manner.
Now the momentum is picking up
around the country to adapt sentencing
laws and justice system interventions to
revised views of youth accountability
for wrongdoing. As an example, here in
California in September 2013, Governor
Brown signed broadly supported
legislation giving state prisoners with
long sentences the right to a review
hearing and possible release on parole if
their crimes were committed before they
were 18 years old (SB 260, Hancock,
D-Berkeley). The new law explicitly
requires the Parole Board to take into
account “the diminished culpability of
juveniles as compared to adults.”
This fall I discussed the new crossroad
of law and adolescent development
in conference panels hosted by the
California Wellness Foundation and the
California Administrative Office of the
Courts. As Chair of the Juvenile Justice
Standing Committee at the Board of
State and Community Corrections, I
am also working with the experts on
that committee to consider how law
enforcement, courts, and probation
departments throughout the state might
need to adjust to the growing mountain of
research on adolescent development. This
is an important topic with the potential
to transform how juvenile justice systems
and professionals respond to cases of
youthful misconduct in the years ahead.
For more information about the
Juvenile Justice Program, please go
to: www.commonweal.org/program/
juvenile-justice-program/
We are grateful to the following funders
for their generous support of the Juvenile
Justice Program: Annie E. Casey
Foundation, The California Endowment,
The California Wellness Foundation, Sierra
Health Foundation, van Loben Sels/Rembe
Rock Foundation, and Wallace Alexander
Gerbode Foundation.
ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE UPDATE
A Breakthrough at Last?
< continued from page 6
and other medical and public health
groups were soon on board, as
research pointed to a looming disaster.
In September 2013, the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC) issued a
landmark report, which makes the
declaration of war formal. With
The New York Time’s editors
confirming that this is a “crisis,”
the CDC for the first time assigned
numbers to the suffering: at least
two million Americans fall ill from
antibiotic-resistant infections each
year, with at least 23,000 dying, and
warned of “potentially catastrophic
consequences” if we don’t curtail
the approximately half of all such
use that is unneeded but promotes
bacterial resistance.
As I told the San Francisco
Chronicle when the CDC report
was released, the report “clearly
implicates agriculture’s contribution
to the problem. The big question
is whether leaders in agriculture
and government will finally
listen to their own expert agency
on this.” And that would mean
finally adopting and enforcing
long-proposed regulations on how
much antibiotic use can occur in
agriculture. We’ll hope that occurs
at last, and keep on the case.
To see the full report on antibiotics
from the U.S. Centers on Disease
Control and Prevention, go to
http://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/
threat-report-2013/
COMMONWEAL
■
December 2013
9
W I T H
G R AT I T U D E
We express our deep gratitude to the following organizations that have supported Commonweal this year:
Alan and Nancy Baer Foundation ● Alberta S. Kimball–Mary L. Anhaltzer Foundation ● Annie E. Casey Foundation
The Art of Renewal, Inc. dba The Lia Fund ● The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations ● Atlantic Trust Company ● Barb’s Race
The Bella Vista Foundation ● Bellwether Foundation ● Bet Lev Foundation ● Boston University ● Bronx School of Science, Class of ‘54
The California Endowment ● The California Wellness Foundation ● Deloitte United Way ● Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund
The Flow Fund Circle ● Fulton-Kunst Fund of RSF Social Finance ● George H. and Ann M. Hogle Fund ● Growald Family Fund
Heart/Land Fund of RSF Social Finance ● The Humphreys Group ● The Jacob and Valeria Langeloth Foundation ● James Irvine Foundation
Jenifer Altman Foundation ● Johnson Family Foundation ● The John Merck Fund ● Jon & Suzanne Wilcox Trust ● Lloyd Symington Foundation
Kalliopeia Foundation ● Marin Community Foundation ● Morning Glory Family Foundation ● Morris Schapiro and Family Foundation
Muriel Murch Full Circle Endowment Fund of the Marin Community Foundation ● National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)
Oak Foundation (Oak Philanthropy Ltd.) ● Panta Rhea Foundation ● Passport Foundation ● Point Reyes Books ● RSF Social Finance
Schwab Charitable Fund ● Sierra Health Foundation ● Silicon Valley Community Foundation ● Sonoma Materials
Susan G. Komen for the Cure–Oregon and SW Washington Affiliate ● Tides Foundation ● University of California ● US EPA
van Loben Sels/RembeRock Foundation ● Vineman, Inc. ● Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation
Wallace Genetic Foundation, Inc. ● Wells Fargo Community Support Campaign ● West Marin Fund ● The Whitman Institute
Wollenberg Foundation ● and several foundations that prefer anonymity.
We offer special thanks and gratitude to the following Commonweal Friends for their generous
contributions during the last six months:
(Donations received after 10/8/13 will be acknowledged in the next newsletter.)
Linda Albert
Barbara Aliza
Peter Allsman
Stuart Aronoff
Alex Barnum
Julia Bartlett
Nancy Bellen
Patricia Berkov
Jacques Caussin
Steve Costa
Margaret Dale
Megan DeBell
Nancy Dudgeon
Paul Ehara
Hilarie Faberman
Robert Feraru
Donald Fink, MD
Richard Fraher
Rachael Freed
Jack Fritz
Garia Deane Gant
Richard Gates
Diane Gerstler
Pearl Glassberg
Julie Gleason
Rosemary Gong
Lindy Rose Graham
L. E. Grams
James Grant
Eileen and Paul Growald
Jeanne Halpern and Louis Prisco
Lindsay Hannah
Cecelia Hard
Roger Harrison
David and Jane Hartley
Marylynn Henes
Nancy Hepp
Barbara Hill
Ray Irish
Mami Ishii
Emily, Steve, Nick, and Sam
Janowsky
Lynda and Phil Kahane-Welch
Carla Kania
Rebecca Katz
Barbara P. Katz
Sister Monica Kaufer
Michelle Keip
Lee and Norman Keller
Lou and Mei Lou Klein
Justin Kubiak
Alyse Laemmle
Joan Lamphier
Mary Lenox
Iyana Christine Leveque
Kate Levinson
Susan Lindheim
William Marcus
Kelly Martin
Lisa Martin and Mark Jensen
Patricia McCall
Elaine McCarthy
Joanna McDonnell
Heather McFarlin
Joshua Mehlman
Josephine Merck
Jo Muilenburg
Judith Nagelberg
Sylvia Nobbmann
Timothy Paik-Nicely
Marjorie Pattison
Claire Peaslee
Shirley Peek Estate
Edith Piltch
Dara Pond
Barbara Recchia
Charles Revier
Bill Robbins
Barbara Romanoff
Ruth Rosen
Roger A. and Fernne Rosenblatt
Lorna Sass, PhD
Heather Schermerhorn
Angela and Wilfried Scholz
Judith Bloom Shaw
Grace, Lester and Emily Shen
Glenn Siegel
Elaine Siegel
Neil Silbermann
Jill Silliphant
Jennifer Antes Sivertson
Leslie Slate
Donald Smith
Elizabeth Snortum
Linda Spangler
William Stewart, MD
Gail Sullivan
Jan Fine Thalberg
Louise Todd
Ellen Todras and Mark Niedelman
Jonathan Toma
Mary Ann and Al Toma
Barbara Towle
Mary Evelyn Tucker
Mary Ann and John Valiulis
Michael Vargo
Lucy Waletzky, MD
Jui H. Wang
Ellen Webb and Sandy Walker
Linda Weinreb
Catherine West, MD
Ruth White and Alan Block
L. Williams
Scoby Zook and Kristine Brown
and several anonymous donors.
COMMONWEAL
P. O. B o x 3 1 6 , B o l i n a s , CA 9 4 9 2 4
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PHONE: 415.868.0970
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Newsletter Editor: Diane Blacker ■ Newsletter Design: Winking Fish ■ Printed on 100% post consumer waste recycled and 100% chlorine-free processed paper with soy-based inks.
Reflections on a 70th Birthday
by Michael Lerner
I turned 70 on October 22nd. I spent the
day in a Cancer Help Program. That
is where I have wanted to be on my
birthday for 28 years. That is my gift to
myself.
My friend and brother Waz Thomas
turned 70 a few days after I did. Waz
is past Coordinator of the Cancer
Help Program, present CCHP Alumni
Coordinator, and Commonweal’s
General Manager. I believe Waz is the
spirit heart of Commonweal. It’s been
a long, strange, and wonderful road we
have walked together.
My tremor, my hearing, and my
memory are the principle challenges of
aging. I’ve lived with benign essential
tremor for decades. Hearing aids are a
marvel. Forgetting names, dates, and
times is a real challenge. Other than
that, I am grateful for good health and a
strong sense that this is a creative time
in my life.
Commonweal is in exceptionally
good hands. Arlene Allsman is our
brilliant Managing Director and Chief
Operating Officer. Vanessa Marcotte
is our amazing Chief Financial Officer.
Waz Thomas brings unique qualities
of wisdom and heart to his work as
General Manager. And now Oren
Slozberg completes the team as Chief
Strategies Officer. This gifted team
leaves me free to focus on what I can
best contribute.
I hope to contribute to Commonweal
for years to come. I’ve had wonderful
New School conversation with Michael Lerner and Angeles Arrien
mentors like Phil Lee and Clark Kerr
and Ruth Chance who continued to be
vibrantly active until late in life. My
father continued to write almost till his
death at the age of 89.
So I’m going for it, friends. For all the
challenges aging brings, it also shines a
uniquely beautiful light on life. The light
of late afternoon. The remains of the day.
I have a wife and family and friends I love,
co-workers I respect, and work that is a
gift beyond imagining. Wonder, gratitude,
and hope are three words that describe my
state of being as I write to you.
I hope you will stay the course with
me, and with us. Your contributions of
all kinds mean everything to us. We
couldn’t do our work without you.
So please, use the enclosed envelope or
contribute online at www.commonweal.org.
Give it forward so we can continue to
give it forward. Walk with us, and we will
walk with you.
Please go to www.commonweal.org to learn
more about our work.
We are deeply grateful to the Jenifer Altman
Foundation, RSF Social Finance, two
anonymous foundations, and many
individual donors for their generous core
support of Commonweal.
In Memory of Lenore Lefer (1938 – 2013),
former CCHP Co-leader
COMMONWEAL
■
December 2013
11
P. O . B o x 3 1 6
Bolinas, CA 94924
Walk This Way
We now have a labyrinth at
Commonweal thanks to the
creative effort of CCHP alums and
Commonweal staff. Built on the site of
an old tennis court in the woods not
far from Pacific House, the labyrinth
traces its path with river stones resting
on a mattress of wood chips. Although
it is new, the circle sits effortlessly in
its place, as if it has always been here.
Beautiful simplicity.
A labyrinth is not a maze; it is a path
we follow as we contemplate, meditate,
or simply be. We do not yet know what
gifts this labyrinth may bring, but we
will walk and discover. We invite you
to walk with us.
We are grateful to Sonoma Materials
and an anonymous donor for their
generous support for the construction
of our labyrinth.
PHOTO BY PHIL BUCHANAN