On ‘Thriving’: CHOP Pediatrician Explores How to Care for Our Neighbors and World

By Lauren Ingeno

Christopher Forrest, MD, PhD, has dedicated much of his career to healing children.

“Pediatricians are largely focused on ending the suffering of kids who have specific medical disorders,” said Dr. Forrest, a professor of Pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, director of the Applied Clinical Research Center, and executive director of PEDSnet, a National Pediatric Learning Health System.

However, the more time Dr. Forrest spent with patients in the hospital, the more he began to ponder a larger question about health, well-being, and resilience outside of the hospital: How do you create a world in which all living things are not just able to survive, but to thrive?

“In the United States, we have these invisible deeply embedded cultural processes that set the stage for how we create social systems, how we support and interact with one another,” he said.

In his time away from CHOP’s Philadelphia campus, Dr. Forrest is writing a book with UCLA’s Neal Halfon, MD, MPH, on the topic of “thriving” that is expected to be published in 2025. The authors propose a paradigm shift for the ways in which Americans think about their roles as members of a community, rather than as individuals.

“The notion of thriving is one which fuses health, well-being, and resilience into a singular concept,” Dr. Forrest said. “How do you go from a transactional economy that’s focused on churning out an ever-increasing amount of goods and services, to one that’s focused on caring for each other? If you put ‘caring’ at the center of the economy, then thriving becomes a natural north star for our social contract.”

While the book’s messages pull from social and medical research — from Dr. Forrest and others — it is not specifically geared toward scientific audiences. Dr. Forrest has approached this writing process differently from how he composes a paper for a scientific journal.

But writing for popular audiences isn’t a completely novel experience for the clinician-scientist. Dr. Forrest comes from a family of writers — his deceased father wrote mystery books, and his mother was a poet before she became a registered nurse. With both of his parents, Dr. Forrest wrote a guide for families about the process of choosing a nursing home.

That early writing experience is, in part, what sparked Dr. Forrest’s interest in the concept of “thriving.”

“When you start looking at systems in American culture, you’ll find that there is a distinct set of values, beliefs, and attitudes that are not oriented toward investment in children or older people and prioritize work over caring and relationships,” Dr. Forrest said. “We have become a socially disengaged society.”

He hopes his upcoming book will be a step toward helping Americans shift their thinking — to create a world that promotes the thriving of all people, living things, and the planet.

“I’ve written more than 300 scientific articles, but to me, this book is the kind of legacy I’m most interested in leaving,” Dr. Forrest said, “one that’s focused on engaging my community more broadly to rethink its direction.”