Patch Adams is both a medical doctor and a clown, but he is also a social activist who has devoted 30 years to changing America's health care system, a system which he describes as expensive and elitist.

He believes that laughter, joy and creativity are an integral part of the healing process and therefore true health care must incorporate such life. Doctors and patients in his model relate to each other on the basis of mutual trust, and patients receive plenty of time from their doctors. Allopathic doctors and practitioners of alternative medicine will work side by side. If you think that all sounds like a utopian impossibility, it isn't. Patch and his colleagues practiced medicine at the Gesundheit Institute in West Virgina in this way for 12 years - in what he calls their pilot project. They saw 15,000 patients. Patch Adams has devoted his life to the study of what makes people happy.

Patch Adams, M.D., is a nationally known speaker on wellness, laughter, and humor as well as on health care and health care systems. He approaches the issues of personal, community, and global health with zestful exuberance, according to Time Magazine. Dr. Adams believes that the most revolutionary act one can commit in our world is to be happy.

Dr Joe Muscolino is a licensed chiropractic physician and teaches anatomy, physiology, and nutrition at Purchase College, State University of New York (SUNY).  He has also taught kinesiology and musculoskeletal and visceral anatomy, physiology, and pathology courses at the Connecticut Centre for Massage Therapy (CCMT) from 1986 - 2010.

Joe has been a massage therapy educator for more than 25 years, with extensive experience in teaching kinesiology and musculoskeletal assessment and technique classes. He has authored 8 major publications with Mosby of Elsevier Science, including the best selling The Muscle and Bone Palpation Manual, Kinesiology, and The Muscular System Manual.

Joe is an approved provider by the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (NCBTMB) for continuing education (CE) credit for massage therapists and bodyworkers and runs numerous advanced study workshops, including deep tissue, advanced stretching, joint mobilization, and palpation workshops, as well as cadaver labs.

Sonya Brownie PhD, N.D. Lecturer in Aging, and Aged Care Southern Cross University. Sonya’s doctoral project was a large, national study that examined dietary supplement utilisation, nutritional risk and physical activity patterns in older Australians. This work gave rise to several publications in peer-reviewed journals. She has contributed a chapter about older peoples’ use of supplements for an international book about nutrition and ageing. She has also published, and given public presentations, on a broad range of topics concerning the health and wellbeing of older people.

Currently, she is the unit assessor for several gerontology units across the post graduate and undergraduate programs at Southern Cross University. Her current research activities include an investigation of the determinants of health behaviour in older residents in the local area, and an evaluation of the benefits to both staff and residents in Eden Alternative aged care facilities. She is dedicated to promoting healthy ageing as an attainable goal for older Australians, and supporting older people to construct and pursue meaningful lives.

Dr Airdre Grant is an academic who has taught in the field of natural medicine for over 25 years. Her areas of interest include food as medicine, and also spirituality and health. She has worked as Director of Studies at Nature Care College in sydney, a researcher at NatMed Research Centre at Southern Cross University (SCU), and now works as an academic in the Division of Teaching and Learning at SCU. She has a research interest in education in complementary medicine and has published about the importance of philosophy as a key signature of, and identifier for the profession. Her PhD thesis looks at the role of spirituality as a component of education in natural medicine.