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Hollywood, Health & Society Director Sandra de Castro Buffington and HH&S program administrator Chris Dzialo recently traveled to India for the public launch of its global center called The Third Eye, bringing in local writers for a series of panels, classes and storytelling workshops, and taking them on a research trip to explore the kinds of health-related challenges facing young girls and women in a remote village.

Hollywood, Health & Society led a select group of writers on a “Jurassic Park”-style tour of remote Santa Cruz Island off the coast of Santa Barbara to learn about the effects of climate change, wildlife restoration efforts and how to live in a sustainable, off-the-grid environment. Accompanied by two experts from The Nature Conservancy—John Randall and Ric Wiles—the six writers and HH&S support staff departed early-morning, overcast Ventura Harbor for the hour-long crossing by ferry. A bumper sticker on the ship’s bridge read “I Brake for Whales”—a harbinger of things to come later in the day. On the way back, the group was spellbound by a rare treat—a mega-pod of thousands of dolphins swimming alongside the ship, with a handful of 50-foot humpback whales that repeatedly surfaced as they all feasted on great schools of anchovies.

Amid all the talk about DNA, double helixes and genetic variations at the Genomes Environments Traits Conference in Boston was a bit of entertainment industry sizzle, as Hollywood, Health & Society Director Sandra de Castro Buffington delivered a featured presentation on inspiring writers and producers to craft storylines that improve health worldwide. The event’s main topic was the frontiers of human biology, specifically personal genome sequencing—the mapping of an individual’s complete set of DNA—which is increasingly being seen as a promising new medical front in the treatment of disease, as well as for preventive health care.