Exponential Healing for Existential Times
Psychedelic Public Health
joins the community and population power of public health with the therapeutic and transformational potential of psychedelics for equitable and safe human and planetary health
Psychedelic public health includes classic and non-classic psychedelics and complementary therapeutic, contemplative, cultural, traditional, energetic, ecological, and expressive modalities
Our Mission
We are establishing psychedelic public health as a new discipline to amplify and accelerate psychedelic benefits and safety at collective levels
Our mission addresses a critical gap in psychedelics by incorporating collective-level strategies that address equity, health determinants, non-clinical use, Indigenous knowledge and people, and community context
The Imperative
The status quo has produced intractable crises in health, justice, and climate
Psychedelics work on collective pathways that can support pro-health, pro-social, pro-environment solutions and attend to suffering.
These crises are collective in cause, scale, scope, impact.
The prevailing biomedical focus in psychedelics does not match the scale of need or scope of use due to focus on individual and clinical care, legal barriers, service bottlenecks, high costs, and racial, cultural and trust barriers.
Population-wide, transformational solutions are required.
Public Health adds necessary population-level prevention, promotion, and community approaches for health, wellness and and safety for collective benefits in all contexts.
Why Psychedelic Public Health
Rising use of psychedelics
Beneficial potential for major public health issues such as addiction, trauma, depression, chronic disease, and health behaviors such as smoking and violence.
Evolving policy context in global, country, state/province and local settings.
Concerns regarding safety, adverse events, misconduct, and safe supply
Equity gaps in access, affordability, and representation in research, training, service.
Transformational possibilities for human, environmental, and planetary health.
A need for action
Psychedelic Public Health, guided by equity, ethics, Indigenous knowledge, and community approaches can amplify and accelerate population and community-level benefits and protections.
Public health’s scope encompasses all psychedelic use and settings, not only therapeutic and clinical ones.
Public health generates collective-level impacts as it works at interpersonal, community, population, social, and systems levels.
Public health has a duty to health and safety, regardless of psychedelics’ regulatory status.
Our seminal research, published in Social Science & Medicine (2024) finds public health is underrepresented in the psychedelic renaissance, with low public health engagement in psychedelic research and scholarship, limited contact between public health and psychedelics, and structural inequities in psychedelic science:
In 228 Schools and Programs of Public Health (SPPHs) and 59 Psychedelic Research Centers (PRCs), CPPH found:
Low SPPH engagement in psychedelics
3% SPPHs substantially engaged with psychedelic research, courses, training, events, or media
Few bridges between the two fields
10% PRCs with a SPPH partnership
5% PRCs with a top leader holding a public health degree
3% PRCs with personnel holding public health degree
Equity gaps in psychedelic leadership
22% PRCs with women as top leaders or co-leaders, 34% with Black, Indigenous, Hispanic, Asian, Middle Eastern top leaders
5% PRCs with non-binary top leadership
1 PRC with an Indigenous-Native co-lead