14 May 2020
Global Wellness Institute joins Vatican's COVID-19 Commission working group
BY Liz Terry
The Global Wellness Institute (GWI), has joined a working group within the Vatican's COVID-19 Commission.
The new body was established in early April by Pope Francis with the aim of confronting the current crisis and working to 'visualise the world we need to build post-COVID-19'.
The Commission, led by Cardinal Peter Turkson, is run by the Vatican's Dicastery [department] for Promoting Integral Human Development and divided into five working groups, each addressing a different aspect of the pandemic.
The GWI has joined working group two, which brings together public and private institutions, universities, social movements, economists and entrepreneurs, to create research and thinking about a post-COVID future.
The aim being to 'connect the best minds in the areas of ecology, the economy, health and public security'.
Working group two will also address the flaws in modern healthcare systems and promote integral health and all its components: physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, social and environmental.
The other Commission working groups are group one – COVID-19 assistance in the community; group three – communications; group four – collaboration between nations; and group five – fundraising.
The Pope has expressed his belief that we have an unprecedented opportunity to collaborate to solve the socio-economic, environmental and health challenges looming in our future.
The GWI's contribution to the working group will be a series of eight white papers under the title Resetting the world with wellness.
These will examine how a holistic concept of wellness could transform human life in the workplace, the built environment and in relation to mental wellbeing.
Katherine Johnston and Ophelia Yeung, GWI’s senior researchers and directors of the Vatican project said: “Wellness is a vital concept to reset the world after COVID-19. Not only does it link mind, body, and spirit, it connects our individual selves with community and planetary wellbeing."
The white papers will be distributed to church leaders and via the Vatican network, as well as to global leaders and ordinary people, bringing GWI’s research to new audiences.
GWI’s eight white papers in the Resetting the world with wellness series contain facts, data, and examples of best practice, employing interdisciplinary thinking and with calls to action.
They've been created to recommend strategies that could help reset the world post-pandemic, with a focus on prevention and a proactive wellness-based mindset.
Three are available now – click the links below to download:
A new vision for a post COVID-19 future summarises key concepts of wellness and outlines how it can provide a roadmap for healing and growth as the world emerges from the pandemic.
Healthy built environments for healthy people describes how our unhealthy built environment can cause both chronic and infectious diseases, and examines the roles communities, businesses and governments can play in building healthier homes and communities.
Work, health and dignity spotlights how the dangerous, unhealthy, inequitable and stressful working conditions that have been exposed by COVID-19, can spark a collective will for radical change that is necessary to bring health and dignity back to our working lives and workplaces.
Additional papers will be published on the following topics and dates: mental wellness (13 May), physical movement (20 May), social wellness and community (27 May), food and nourishment (3 June), and travel and wonder (10 June).
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