Ping Ho, MA, MPH is Founder and Director of Arts & Healing Initiative, a nonprofit organization that teaches members of the public how to use trauma-informed and culturally mindful arts practices to provide sustainable support in their own communities. Ping co-developed the program, Beat the Odds®: Social and Emotional Skill Building Delivered in a Framework of Drumming, and served as principal investigator of the UCLA study that documented its effectiveness, which was published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine. She also developed the Certificate Program in Social Emotional Arts (SEA) and the SEA on a Shoestring program of supportive art, movement, music, and writing for individuals or groups in any setting. Ping is associate editor for the creative arts therapies section of the Journal of Integrative and Complementary Medicine. In addition, she is co-author of the National Parenting Products Award-winning book, The Innovative Parent: Raising Connected, Happy, Successful Kids through Art (Ohio University/Swallow Press, 2019).
Ping was founding administrator for the UCLA Collaborative Centers for Integrative Medicine, now the UCLA Integrative Medicine Collaborative, on which she continues to serve as a steering committee member. She was also founding administrator for the UCLA Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, which led to the privilege of writing for Norman Cousins and co-writing the professional autobiography of George F. Solomon, MD, founder of the field. She has a BA in psychology with honors from Stanford—where she was later appointed to initiate the still-thriving Health Improvement Program for faculty and staff—an MA in counseling psychology with specialization in exercise physiology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an MPH in community health sciences from UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Her vision for this field has been inspired by the nexus of her graduate education in counseling and public health with her lifelong experience in the performing arts.
