Kinship Medicine w/ Wendy Johnson, MD

Author Wendy Johnson joins us for a discussion on her debut novel, Kinship Medicine, exploring themes of environmental justice, community organizing, mutual aid, and more.

About the book:

For fans of Braiding Sweetgrass, The Future We Choose, and The Blue Zones, here is a
book about the effect our relationship to nature has on our well-being and health.
In Kinship Medicine Dr. Wendy Johnson makes the case that wellness is rooted in interdependence.
It’s a perspective she’s come to through 30 years working as a family physician and public health expert, supporting patients with HIV, treating communities in environmentally harmed areas, and advocating for mothers suffering from addiction. Through all of her work, she’s seen how connection to the natural world and each other are essential to our health, and we can’t be fully well when the environments and systems we’re living
with are sick and suffering.
The antidotes to many of the causal factors of poor health—loneliness, industrial diets, systemic inequality, fear of death, profit-based healthcare—are relational, both with each other and with the living earth. Through evidence from public health, sociology, anthropology, human ecology, and medicine, Dr. Wendy Johnson offers readers a clear vision of what a new society might look like, and provides concrete examples and methods for caring for our collective health together.

About the participants:

Dr. Wendy Johnson is a family physician, public health professor, activist, and writer who has spent her life advocating for a world where everyone can live long lives in equitable communities. Her career includes stints scaling up HIV treatment in Mozambique, overseeing an urban public health department, and, most recently, directing a community clinic in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has a Master’s in public health from Johns Hopkins and holds faculty appointments at the University of Washington and the University of New Mexico. Dr. Johnson has been a vocal activist on many progressive issues both locally and globally and is a two-time TEDx speaker.

Dr. Alma Zaragoza-Petty (she/her) is an educator, speaker, and author deeply rooted in the immigrant experience of Los Angeles. Raised between Acapulco and East L.A., she is a proud first-generation college graduate who brings over 20 years of experience in education, social justice, and community healing. A passionate advocate for equity and liberation, Dr. ZP is recognized for her powerful voice in spaces that center on first-generation, working-class, and Latina experiences. Her recent book, Chingona: Owning Your Inner Badass for Healing and Justice, is a personal and political call to action—reclaiming cultural identity and transforming generational pain into leadership and collective healing. Whether in the classroom, on a stage, or within grassroots spaces, Dr. Zaragoza-Petty remains committed to reimagining a future where justice, education, and radical healing are accessible to all.

Host or Publisher Village Well Books & Coffee