Consortium takes leading role in national whole health movement
Since its founding in 2023, the Virginia Tech Whole Health Consortium has advanced research, collaboration, and national whole health policy.
Mengxi Zhang clearly remembers the first meeting of the Whole Health Consortium at Virginia Tech.
“We were partnered with health workers, members from the community, and local health care organizations to learn about their struggles and what we could offer,” said Zhang, assistant professor in the Department of Health System and Implementation Science in the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. “That caught my attention and aligned with my interests in doing applied health-related work and collaborating with communities. Since then, I don’t think I’ve ever missed one of the meetings. I’ve loved it.”
Just two years since its founding, the consortium has supported 19 transdisciplinary research projects and grown to more than 250 members, including researchers, health care professionals, community leaders, educators, and industry partners, as a part of its mission to advance an evidence-based whole health framework.
“The United States spends 17 percent of its gross domestic product on health care yet ranks last among peer nations in life expectancy,” said Tina Savla, director of the Whole Health Consortium. “Whole health approaches connect meaning, purpose, and social connection to physical and mental well-being. This isn’t about adding another program, it’s about rewiring the purpose of care so health systems create health, not just responses to disease.”
This framework aligns medical care, behavioral and public health, social support, and other resources around what matters most to each person and community. Unlike current health and social systems in the U.S., whole health shifts the power and responsibility from institutions to people and communities, allowing them the space to create and organize health solutions that are unique to their needs and improve overall well-being.
The consortium’s efforts have positioned it as a national leader in the health care space. In 2025, it was selected by the Doris Duke Foundation’s Collective Initiative to host one of 18 national conversations for the 2025 Whole Health Symposium. Supported by the American Cancer Society and an anonymous donor through the Collective Initiative, the Virginia Tech-led event brought together more than 250 professionals to discuss the advancement of rural health in a way that could model the type of transformation possible when research, policy, and community move together.
Following the symposia, the Whole Health Consortium was one of four selected to write a memo about possible funding models, policy changes, and industry investments that promote disease prevention, early intervention, and improved care delivery and clinical outcomes.
“We wanted to help symposium organizers from the Strengthening Pathways initiative translate their knowledge into actionable policy recommendations,” said Grace Wickerson, senior manager for climate and health at the Federation of American Scientists. “To supercharge whole health adoption, we need to make a national push to transform how health care operates, and the Whole Health convening had a strong connection to current policy debates around improving health outcomes.”
The national blueprint members crafted was published by the Federation of American Scientists and shared examples of whole health implementation success along with actions federal and state leaders can take to embed whole health as a unifying framework across health, social, and well-being systems.
“Our conversations at the symposium gave the national blueprint its backbone,” Savla said, who is also a professor of human development and family science. “The discussions directly informed the blueprint’s focus on community-embedded implementation, cross-sector collaboration, and long-term investment in the whole health workforce.”
The Whole Health Consortium is already putting the national blueprint into motion by connecting research, education, and community partnerships through seed grants and pilot projects across the region. The consortium will also continue to partner with the Doris Duke Foundation, the Strengthening Pathways Collective, and others to test and refine models that make whole health scalable, measurable, and sustainable.
Moving forward, the consortium’s goal is to expand its focus on rural whole health, strengthen data commons that connect research, community, and clinical systems, and partner with state and national collaborators to pilot key policy recommendations.
“We are becoming a living lab for whole health in the U.S. by building both the evidence and the trust needed to make whole health scientifically sound, community grounded and ready to scale,” Savla said. “The goal is simple: make whole health the default operating system for how the nation creates health.”
