Building resilient communities

Since the Resilience Project kicked off in 2023, Leighton Y. Huey, MD, associate dean for behavioral health integration and community care transformation, has guided leaders in Lackawanna and Luzerne counties through a successful colloquium in 2023 and regular consortium meetings thereafter. In September, the Resilience Project took another major step forward with “Resilience as Public Health,” a 2-day event featuring workshops and conversation with renowned resilience scholar Michael Ungar, PhD, of Dalhousie University.

“At our 2023 colloquium, our cross-sectional group of community leaders engaged in an infrastructure build,” Dr. Huey said, noting the consortium is focused on local school districts, the region’s colleges, universities and professional schools, community and political leaders, and community agencies.

“Our discussions in September centered around how to create ‘an educational inoculation’ that builds resilience the way a vaccine builds immunity.”

On Sept. 19, the “Resilience as Public Health” event facilitated resilience working groups from school districts, higher education, law enforcement, local government and community agencies centered around building an “inoculation” that would encourage resilient qualities like selfregulation, self-efficacy and mindfulness.

“The educational inoculation is an approach to provide information to parents about what can influence good development in their kids and contribute to success in school, development of good relationships with others and personal happiness and satisfaction,” Dr. Huey said.

On Sept. 20, the School of Medicine hosted a public forum on the subject of “Resilience as Public Health” where Dr. Ungar shared his experiences building resilient communities around the world.

Dr. Huey said next steps for the Resilience Project will include shoring up buy-in and support from a wide cross-section of the community.

“This is a decade-long project or more, and we hope people can understand that there has to be buy-in and engagement from the community. Right now, we’re building an integrated collective that’s saying, ‘This will take some time, but it’s a good idea because things need to work better than they’re working right now.’”