Integrating Ancestral Wisdom and Science for True Health

• This is a live online conversation with audience Q&A. Registration includes livestream access and ad-free replay.
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The word medicine has long been shaped by systems that equate healing with prescriptions, procedures, and profit. It often evokes fear, scarcity, and dependence. Yet across cultures and generations, medicine has also meant something else: nourishment from food and plants, connecting with nature, movement, community building, and practices passed down through lineages of care. Many of these ancestral medicines—once marginalized or dismissed—are now increasingly validated by research in fields such as integrative medicine, neuroscience, and public health.

Join Integrative family physician, educator, and activist Dr. Geeta Maker-Clark for a conversation on integrating science and ancient wisdom for true health and healing. Sharing insights from her latest book, Medicine for All People, Dr. Maker-Clark discusses how inequitable extractive food and healthcare systems have co-opted our awareness of our natural deep intelligence and connectedness—contributing to the disproportionate burden of chronic inflammatory disease in communities that have been historically excluded from resources and power. These conditions are not simply the result of individual choices, but of structural forces that shape access to nourishment, safety, and care.

In this illuminating conversation, Dr. Maker-Clark encourages us to return to medicines that are both ancient and urgently relevant: culturally rooted foods, gratitude and breath practices that regulate the nervous system, movement traditions—including dance—that support neuroplasticity and joy, and practices of connection that restore belonging. Integrating these powerful healthful practices creates a path for individuals and communities to move toward radical social change.

Dr. Maker-Clark invites us to heal from the individual and collective trauma of injustice and support a transition from a culture of stress and sickness to one of healing and belonging.

Meet the Host

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Dr. Geeta Maker-Clark MD, ABOIM is a nationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in the field of Integrative Medicine. She is the Director of Integrative Nutrition and Advocacy at Endeavor Health, Clinical Assistant Professor and Co-Director of the Culinary Medicine program at the University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine, and faculty for the U of Arizona Integrative Medicine and Ayurveda Fellowship. Dr. Maker-Clark has spent two decades studying integrative medicine, nutritional science, botanical medicine, mind-body medicine, and natural childbirth in health clinics all over the world. She started the Food is Power program on the South Side of Chicago in Chicago Public Schools to empower youth with health literacy, through a curriculum that focuses on decolonized food education, food justice and sovereignty and pioneered one of the first culinary medicine programs in a medical school in the country. Dr. Maker-Clark was recognized as a national leader in food justice activism with a Castanea Fellowship from 2019-2022 and the Mesa Refuge Michael Pollan Fellowship in Food Journalism in 2021. She has received numerous honors for her leadership in health equity, food justice, and integrative medicine, and is a sought-after speaker who brings together science, storytelling, and practical wisdom to help people and communities flourish.

Dr. Maker-Clark believes in transforming the way we think about medicine and looks to ancient wisdom and modern struggles as opportunities to heal with the medicines that are all around us. As a woman of color, a community organizer, and integrative physician and thought leader in the food as medicine movement, her work aims to help communities be well nourished- the heart of healing in our society and country. Her forthcoming book, Medicine for All People: Integrating Science and Ancient Wisdom for Revolutionary Healing, is a compelling invitation to restore the wisdom, practices, and relationships that have been marginalized by modern life yet remain essential to individual and collective healing.

Important Information

We are grateful to our Bookstore Partner

Marcus Books is the nation’s oldest Black-owned independent bookstore celebrating its 60th year. Marcus Books’ mission is to provide opportunities for Black folks and their allies to celebrate and learn about Black people everywhere. Learn more about Marcus Books.

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Ticket holders will have access to an ad-free replay of the event for one month after the live event, after which unlimited viewing with ads will be available. Portions of the audio will also be released on our podcast. Only registered ticket holders who choose to watch live can participate in the chat and Q&A.

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All tickets and add-ons purchased for this event are nonrefundable.