The eighth Salus Health Care Forum was convened on December 4, 2024. In attendance were Mitch Applegate, William Bergquist, Jerome Fish, Bill Gillanders, Gay Teurman, Mark Vukalcicc and Jack Westfall. The Trigger topic for this forum was provided by Jerome Fish who introduced the theme of challenge and threat. What happens when some impending event is considered to be threatening as opposed to being considered a challenge?

Here is a narrative based on conversation that took place during this forum:

Jeremy

The topic I picked for today is one that is currently of interest to me. It concerns the neurological difference between threat and a challenge. My comments are based on a research report about the perception of challenge and threat by athletes. Here is link to this report: Threat/Challenge Article Link: file:///C:/Users/bergq/Documents/a.a.a.Communities%20Collaborating/a.a.a.a.Health%20Care%20Forum/December%204,%202024/Threat-Challenge-Athletes-2020.pdf

What are the differences in neurological responses to these two conditions? I discovered there’s a theory of challenge versus threat in athletes. I thought I would bring that theory to this group in part because we’re living at a time when the level of threat seems to be accelerating. I believe that this level of threat contributes to people’s polarization in our society. Perhaps if we could figure out how to help people shift from a threat response to a challenge response, we could bring down the temperature and decrease unnecessary trauma.

Let me provide a bit of history. You know, residents and medical students really want to learn about trauma-informed and resilient-oriented health care. They want to learn about this stuff; however, we aren’t really teaching them about trauma and resilience because we haven’t really learned about trauma and resilience. I think the younger generation is really hungry for a lot of this crossover training. So, in that context, I have shared this article about challenge and threat with all of you. Furthermore, I shared the algorithm on which that article was based.