Program Structure

Typically, participants will meet once a month for six months at a location selected by the health facility liaison and the program facilitator.  Participants will be provided with selected books and readings and will share a meal together at the start of each discussion.  Discussion sessions typically last one and a half to two hours.  Facilitators are trained professionals from a variety of backgrounds.  Currently, Hawai‘i is fortunate to have Dr. Craig Howes, Director of the Center for Biographical Studies at the University of Hawai‘i-Manoa, as our lead facilitator. 

Readings have included: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman, Tsunami Years by Kuliet S. Kono, How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman, An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales by Oliver Sacks, Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Illich, and others.