By Matthew Keck —
The Center for Creative Placehealing is looking to transform the University of Louisville’s work culture into a positive one.
“More than 80% of America’s healthcare expenditure is on largely preventable (non-communicable) diseases like depression,” states the U of L School of Pubic Health website.
Theodore Edmonds, director of the CCP and U of L School of Public Health professor, is leading the change in workplace culture at U of L.
“Our research at the University of Louisville indicates that if Cultural Wellbeing is scientifically supported in way that increases hope, trust and belonging, then individual employee performance improves across multiple key performance indicators and drives new innovation as well as inclusive growth at organizational, community and market levels,” said Edmonds.
CCP defines creative placehealing as an evolutionary approach to population health research and development that centers innovation on creativity and culture. This means that they focus on how work culture impacts the mental health of those within the workplace.
The CCP program focuses on the five C’s of placehealing, which are: commerce, compassion, culture, creativity and collaboration. These areas allow CCP to develop solutions for making the workplace a more positive and enjoyable experience.
“Cultural Wellbeing is the state of an organization or community which feels inclusive for its diverse members in a way that supports their full, individual participation in the goals of the group,” said Edmonds. “This type of inclusion can be measured as a construct of hope, trust and belonging.”
A goal of theirs is to cultivate underrepresented talent such as African-Americans, women, LGBTQ, Latinx and other groups. Innovative solutions like labs and research help the CCP create better environments for this to be possible.
Employees, health providers, self-insured employers, government and communities are the groups that CCP aims to help.
“The Center for Creative Placehealing provides an inclusive, efficient, intellectual space for developing culturally-responsive solutions with and for communities, consumers, and employees. Deliverables include cultural strategies, innovation labs, research support and scalable health communications initiatives,” says the U of L School of Public Health website.
The CCP has partnered with the Louisville Metro Government and St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank to lead to Culture Well-Being 2020 initiative. Louisville will be the first city in the U.S. to have scientifically measured corporate inclusion using primarily health research.
The U of L School of Public Health has launched a start-up fund to support the CCP’s research and development program.
