By David A. Shaywitz, MD, PhD
A working, evidence-based framework for durable health integrating physiology, agency, & connection.
KindWellHealth is a working framework for durable health, integrating physiology, agency, and connection. It is grounded in real-world constraints, and guided by robust confidence in human capability and potential.
This work is animated by research linking agency and health -- and by the practical idea that agency can be strengthened by building usable competences people can carry across situations.
By “competences,” I mean reusable skills and routines -- practical ways of following through -- that people can deliberately carry across situations. For example, a challenging run can become more than exercise: with the right scaffolding, it becomes evidence that you can persist when it’s uncomfortable. That competence can show up later -- in work, in relationships, in how you care for yourself. And it runs the other way, too: with a little guidance, skills you build outside athletics -- curiosity, consistency, showing up -- can make it easier to start (and, critically, to restart when necessary) movement and fitness.
This framework starts from the idea that health emerges from the interplay of three foundational elements:
Physiology: grounding health in biology, using the best available science on sleep, movement, metabolism, and biomarkers without hype or false precision.
Agency: capability and conviction: the sense that you can still shape your future, strengthened by a pattern of acting on that belief.
Connection: relationships, communities, and purpose that make life meaningful and make healthy choices sustainable.
This working project brings together a framework, annotated readings, and essays on how physiology, agency, and connection can support durable health for real people living in a highly contingent world.
I approach this work as a physician-scientist and longtime health executive, focused on how teams can translate these ideas into health products and systems that help people build capability and agency.
KindWellHealth seeks to:
Clarify and refine an integrated vision of health that unites physiology, agency, and connection.
Translate that vision into practical, repeatable ways to build capability and agency in ourselves and others.
Explore how health systems, workplaces, and digital platforms can be designed to support these foundations.