Where Healing Meets Humanity

What does it actually take to show up for another person?

Care has become a system. It is scheduled, coded, measured in throughput and discharge rates. Most of what makes it feel like care to the person receiving it, like being noticed, being touched gently, being spoken to as though you are a person rather than a case, sits outside what any of that measures. Presence is difficult to fund. So it becomes optional.

Dr. Iza Correll built an institution on the opposite assumption. Having watched conventional humanitarian aid fail to durably change children's health, safety or happiness, she founded OVI Children's Hospital in Kenya, a long-term paediatric facility providing free, comprehensive care to abandoned children with terminal and debilitating conditions, staffed entirely by Kenyan medical professionals. It is named for her nephew Ovidio, who died at four. 

Her work sits at a junction that touches on some of the most profound questions. OVI exists for children whose conditions are described as terminal and debilitating, which forces a harder version of a question most of us get to avoid: when a cure is not what is on offer, what is care actually for? Her answer runs through dignity, presence, trauma-informed practice, and the case for beauty as a clinical consideration, designing environments and systems around how a nervous system actually works.

Dr. Iza Correll is the founder and CEO of OVI Children's Hospital in Kenya. She holds a Doctor of Medical Science specialising in global health and is dually licensed as a United States Physician Associate and a Kenyan Clinical Officer. She is the youngest-ever recipient of the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award for Global Citizenship, an honour she shares with laureates including Jimmy Carter and Michael J. Fox, and an inductee of the University of Kentucky College of Health Sciences Hall of Fame. She speaks internationally on loneliness and human connection, including at Yale and TEDx.

To find out more about Dr. Iza's work, visit her website: https://izacorrell.com/

In a time marked by growing mental health pressures, uncertainty about the future of work, and increasing polarization, the Center for Human Flourishing lecture series equips students, faculty, staff, and community members with research-informed tools to move beyond coping toward flourishing.

Your support helps translate wellbeing and health science into practical learning, strengthen trust and belonging, and position Concordia as a leader in nurturing resilient, engaged communities.

This event is part of the Flourish Fridays series.

Dynamic sessions.

Practitioners at the cutting edge.

Radically different ways to explore the same question:

What does it actually take to thrive?