The Heal­ing Hub, which cre­ates safe, in­ten­tion­al spaces that pri­ori­tise dig­ni­ty, trust, and holis­tic sup­port for in­di­vid­u­als nav­i­gat­ing se­ri­ous ill­ness, was for­mal­ly in­tro­duced to key stake­hold­ers at an in­ti­mate soft launch held on De­cem­ber 20 at the home of its founder Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith.

The pri­vate gath­er­ing em­bod­ied the ethos of the Heal­ing Hub and show­cased a se­ries of im­pact­ful con­tri­bu­tions.

So­cial work­er Lynette McLean-Mur­ray em­pha­sised the crit­i­cal role of strong psy­choso­cial net­works in health out­comes, not­ing that emo­tion­al and so­cial sup­port are es­sen­tial com­po­nents of ef­fec­tive care, par­tic­u­lar­ly for in­di­vid­u­als man­ag­ing long-term or life-al­ter­ing di­ag­noses.

Janelle Car­na­van shared her per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence of ac­tive­ly man­ag­ing can­cer, ex­press­ing grat­i­tude for be­ing in­clud­ed in the Heal­ing Hub’s on­line com­mu­ni­ty pri­or to its clo­sure. She high­light­ed the im­por­tance of safe, mod­er­at­ed spaces where pa­tients feel sup­port­ed, un­der­stood, and not iso­lat­ed.

Richard Young, Cre­ative Di­rec­tor of the O2N Foun­da­tion, spoke on the nat­ur­al ex­ten­sion of the foun­da­tion’s hu­man de­vel­op­ment man­date to in­clude the Heal­ing Hub, de­scrib­ing it as a nec­es­sary evo­lu­tion that in­te­grates emo­tion­al well­ness, ad­vo­ca­cy, and per­son­al em­pow­er­ment.

Sur­gi­cal on­col­o­gist Dr Ly­ronne Olivi­er ad­dressed the im­por­tance of un­der­stand­ing the hu­man el­e­ment of care, stress­ing that clin­i­cal ex­cel­lence must be ac­com­pa­nied by com­pas­sion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and pa­tient-cen­tred sup­port to achieve op­ti­mal out­comes.

Act­ing Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Jea­nine St Bernard con­grat­u­lat­ed the founder and ac­knowl­edged the Heal­ing Hub as an ini­tia­tive that fills a crit­i­cal gap with­in the ex­ist­ing med­ical frame­work. She un­der­scored the val­ue of pa­tient nav­i­ga­tion and ad­vo­ca­cy ser­vices in strength­en­ing health­care de­liv­ery and im­prov­ing pa­tient ex­pe­ri­ences.

In her ad­dress, Dy­er-Grif­fith, a breast can­cer sur­vivor, shared deeply per­son­al re­flec­tions on her own jour­ney and the chal­lenges faced by in­di­vid­u­als man­ag­ing can­cer and oth­er se­ri­ous ill­ness­es. She high­light­ed sys­temic bar­ri­ers, emo­tion­al strain, and the lack of co­or­di­nat­ed sup­port that many pa­tients en­counter.

Dy­er-Grif­fith ar­tic­u­lat­ed her vi­sion to trans­form the Heal­ing Hub from an on­line com­mu­ni­ty and dig­i­tal safe space in­to a brick-and-mor­tar Heal­ing Hub Pa­tient Nav­i­ga­tion and Ad­vo­ca­cy Cen­tre. The pro­posed cen­tre will pro­vide sup­port­ive ser­vices free to in­di­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies in need.

She fur­ther is­sued a call to cor­po­rate T&T to in­vest in pri­ma­ry health­care and pa­tient-cen­tred sup­port, not­ing that such in­vest­ment con­tributes to bet­ter health out­comes, re­duced sys­tem strain, and re­stored dig­ni­ty for pa­tients.

The event was ex­pert­ly host­ed by T’Shau­na Grif­fith Bain and Mar­cus Scott, both cer­ti­fied pa­tient care nav­i­ga­tors, who guid­ed the pro­gramme with em­pa­thy and pro­fes­sion­al­ism.

“The Heal­ing Hub’s soft launch marks the be­gin­ning of a phased ap­proach to­ward build­ing an in­te­grat­ed sup­port ecosys­tem that bridges med­ical care with ad­vo­ca­cy, ed­u­ca­tion, and emo­tion­al well-be­ing, re­in­forc­ing the be­lief that heal­ing re­quires more than treat­ment alone,” Dy­er-Grif­fith said.