Community-level legal and policy innovations or “experiments” can be important levers to improve health. States and localities are empowered through the 10th Amendment of the United States Constitution to use their police powers to protect the health and welfare of the public. Many legal and policy tools are available, including: the power to tax and spend; regulation; mandated education or disclosure of information, modifying the environment — whether built or natural ; and indirect regulation. These legal and policy interventions can (...) be targeted to specific needs at the community level and are often relatively low-cost, but high impact interventions. As every community is different, effective laws and policies will vary. This freedom allows states and localities to, as Justice Louis Brandeis argued, truly serve as “laboratories of democracy.”. (shrink)

This dissertation has involved exploration of the forest as image and symbol of transformation, insight, and creative inspiration through multi-disciplinary inquiry and work in the creative arts. Using literature from the fields of depth psychology, mythological studies, and the philosophy of imagination as a foundation, I have taken a literal and figurative journey into the forest. In this dissertation, I have used a self-generated method that includes an imaginal process, stages of critical and self reflection, and image amplification, interwoven with (...) creative work as spiritual practice. I have depicted images and experiences from the stages of the forest journey , through journaling, narrative writing, painting, and poetry. A shared development of images, a synergy, took place, with themes and images interweaving through painting and the various forms of writing, transforming with each move. This dissertation is an attempt to use a combination of creative work, an imaginal process, academic sources, and an actual journey-focused on a single image-as a catalyst for deeper understanding of the Self and personal transformation. (shrink)

Ethics & Behavior, Volume 21, Issue 3, Page 261-262, May-June 2011.