integrative health

Integrative, holistic, whole person care – served-up at your doorstep!

January 19, 2023

The Heals on Wheels (HoW) program at Hennepin Healthcare centers around the concept that to truly provide whole person care to everyone in our community, sometimes we must make the effort to literally meet patients where they are. Barriers to transportation and access to whole-person, integrative care are a seemingly insurmountable problem for many. HoW strives to eliminate these barriers by bringing our integrative team directly into the community, fostering deeper connections between the healthcare teams and the people they serve. (more…)

‘Putting up’ fall foods

September 9, 2022

Integrative Internal Medicine Physician, Farmer, and Food-Lover Dr. Kate Shafto teaches us how to make our fall harvest last throughout the winter.

As summer wanes and signs of fall arrive, my attention turns to how I can honor the bounty of summer’s harvest and preserve it for the winter months ahead.

I did not grow up with this tradition, though I vaguely recall an awareness that some people in rural Tennessee, where I was born, spent time canning, preserving and “putting up” food for the winter. I have chosen to learn these skills in recent years as a way to align my family’s lifestyle with our values of respect for the earth, reducing food waste (and packaging and food costs), having more connection to our food and eating as locally as possible for as much of the year as possible. (more…)

Walk with a Doc

November 17, 20211

This fall the Integrative Health team at Hennepin Healthcare has joined with the international non-profit organization Walk with a Doc to promote healthy movement and community. Starting on Sat. Nov 20^th at 10am, Dr. Shawn Olson will lead a fun and relaxing walk through the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden . We will meet under the Cowles Pavilion (the big glass pavilion near the Walker Art Center) where Dr. Olson will give a brief wellness talk and then lead a stroll-at-your-own-pace-and-distance walk through the park. If the weather is bad, we’ll move the walk to the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Both spaces are free, open to the public, and offer the opportunity to explore the healing power of the intersection of art and movement. (more…)

What is Integrative Physical Therapy? How is it different from just regular PT?

April 23, 20211

This is a question I hear almost daily in my work at Hennepin. And it’s a great question because right now Integrative PT is an emerging but nationally undefined specialty. Here at Hennepin we have four fabulous physical therapists who specialize in an integrative and holistic approach to healing and our team recently brainstormed on what distinguishes our work from that of a more traditional physical therapy approach. (more…)

Moving beyond opioids to complementary and integrative services for chronic pain care

January 28, 2021

In 2018, two million people in the US suffered from an opioid use disorder and more than 130 people died every day from opioid-related drug overdoses. This remains an ongoing problem and as a result, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced a plan to combat the opioid crisis. This plan focuses on prioritizing the advancement of better practices for pain management and improving access to these therapies and services. (more…)