Twenty-Five Percent: Dr. Wayne Jonas on Social Support, Cancer Survival, and the Medicine We're Not Prescribing

Twenty-five percent. That's how much longer cancer patients with high social support live compared to those with low social support. Not quality of life. Not comfort. Survival. "If you had a drug that increased your living by twenty-five percent, it would be on the docket immediately." ~ Dr. Wayne Jonas. It is not on the docket. It is not prescribed. It is not reimbursable. And Dr. Jonas has spent his career asking why.

A physician, researcher, former director of the NIH Office of Alternative Medicine, and author of How Healing Works, Dr. Jonas has spent decades at the intersection of science and healing and studying what the data actually says about why people get better. In this episode of The Bridges Between Us, he joins us for a wide-ranging conversation about the difference between curing and healing, why the healthcare system is structurally designed to do one and ignore the other, and what it would take to change that. He talks about the Personal Health Inventory, a tool his foundation has embedded into health systems nationwide, and makes a direct case for why CaringBridge should be integrated into electronic health records as a bridge between what's the matter with a patient and what matters to them as a person.

He also shares something deeply personal: his wife's thirty-year journey through five cancers, her extraordinary gift for building community, and why, after hearing a recent episode of this very podcast, he's thinking about starting a CaringBridge page in her memory. Not for her illness. For the people who loved her.

To read more about Dr. Jonas' anniversary edition of How Healing Works, visit https://www.caringbridge.org/resources/how-healing-works-dr-jonas. 

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