🌿 Highlight of Integrative Well-Being Prize Winner – Mykelti Nuamah 🌿
The Center for Buddhist Studies is proud to recognize Mykelti Nuamah as a recipient of the Spring 2025 Integrative Well-Being Prize.
Mykelti is an undergraduate at the University of Arizona double majoring in Physiology and Medical Sciences and Religious Studies for Health Professionals. His academic work explores the intersections of health humanities, community engagement, and integrative well-being. Through research, internships, and student leadership, he centers culture, spirituality, and narrative as essential dimensions of healing. His work reflects a deep commitment to compassion, ethical reflection, and the humanistic formation of future healthcare professionals.
🏆 Awarded Project:
Integrative Well-Being through Narrative, Reflection, and Community Engagement
Mykelti’s project approaches integrative well-being through a health humanities framework, emphasizing lived experience, storytelling, and relational connection as critical elements of care. Drawing on contemplative studies, religious studies, and biomedical sciences, he examines how healthcare education can move beyond narrow clinical metrics to cultivate reflective, ethical, and community-oriented practitioners.
A central component of his initiative is a student-led integrative retreat that incorporates narrative reflection, embodied practices, shared meals, and facilitated dialogue. These spaces invite participants to reflect on suffering, resilience, and meaning, fostering empathy and relational awareness within healthcare contexts.
By bridging scholarship and public engagement, Mykelti’s work demonstrates how humanities-based approaches can enrich medical education and support more humane and holistic models of care.
Congratulations, Mykelti, on this meaningful achievement.