A life ignited by purpose. A mission. Nature, cities, and a better future. Paul Draus joins the III Global Summit on Science, Nature & Health. In this interview, he discusses his journey from a suburban upbringing to his current work in Detroit, where he explores the intersection of urban environments, health, and well-being. His early experiences in nature sparked an interest in how urban settings impact physical and mental health.
After earning his Ph.D. in sociology from Loyola University Chicago in 2001, Draus worked in public health, focusing on tuberculosis control in New York City and Chicago. Transitioning from documenting issues to seeking solutions, he now investigates how nature can revitalize urban spaces and communities. As a Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and Faculty Director of the Detroit Center, Draus emphasizes the role of nature in fostering resilience and human flourishing, even in degraded urban areas.
Nature and Urban Spaces
„I am interested in that connection between the spaces and people that are considered as waste. And nature is a library of solutions or approaches: just shifting the way we think about what’s considered to be waste and what’s considered to be valuable or beautiful„.
Forest Therapy and Well-being
„And so, forest therapy is something I learned about in the last few years, through some of my associates here in Detroit and then through my father-in-law who owns a farm in Puerto Rico. It’s on a mountain surrounded by tropical forest, cloud forest, actually.
So, these kinds of things really make you think about the resilience of natural systems.
„And when you look at people in Detroit, they’ve done very similar things. They’re living in harsh social and economic circumstances, but yet they’re like that tree on the side of a building. They’re creating something beautiful or managing to survive at whatever level.”
„So those are the kinds of things I got really interested in. Forest therapy adds perspective to the work people are doing here, and it also offers a community for those doing local work to connect.”
Public Health and Social Determinants
„When I started in sociology, I was already working in public health. Naturally, the sociology I studied focused on the impact of urban environments on people, both in terms of their social life chances and outcomes, but also in terms of their physical and mental health, thinking about medicine, the role of medicine, and the role of public health in fostering quality of life in these urban environments.”
„My conclusions, discussed in the first book I wrote in 2004, had to do with both the power and limitations of standard biomedicine. It can treat disease, but it can’t produce health, because the question of what produces health is something much more holistic and expansive than simply treating disease.”
Local Solutions and Regeneration
„I became more interested in the things people were doing, especially in urban environments, to foster health. What would that look like? At the same time, I became more convinced that many of the solutions are being generated locally in these micro environments, where people are developing their own alternatives or responses. The solutions to our cities are already there. We just have to give them the support.”
„I feel like if we keep focusing on taking care of communities, building things from the ground up, that’s one of the lessons I’ve learned from people here in Detroit, especially those who have been through a lot. Black communities in Detroit and in the United States have survived the worst through supporting each other and through creativity and imagination. I see many parallels between that capacity and what we see in natural systems.”
„I still stay connected to other communities, like people who are struggling with histories of substance use, and people in recovery. But I feel like this other way of thinking is part of the solution to that as well. We’re all, in a way, medicating ourselves to fill the holes that we cannot fill with the consumer lifestyle we’ve been sold for so long.”
