Rachel Bracken | Northeast Ohio Medical University (original) (raw)
Papers by Rachel Bracken
The Journal of Medical Humanities, Nov 30, 2023
People with disabilities (PWD) comprise a significant part of the population yet experience some ... more People with disabilities (PWD) comprise a significant part of the population yet experience some of the most profound health disparities. Among the greatest barriers to quality care are inadequate health professions education related to caring for PWD. Drawing upon the expertise of health professions educators in medicine, public health, nursing, social work, and physician assistant programs, this forum showcases innovative methods for teaching core disability skills and concepts grounded in disability studies and the health humanities. Each of the essays offers practical guidance for developing curricular interventions appropriate for students at various levels of training and familiarity with disability to be implemented in classroom discussions, case-based learning, lectures, panels, and clinical simulations across the full spectrum of pre-health and health professions education.
Medical Teacher, Oct 28, 2022
COVID-19, like previous outbreaks of infectious disease at the turn of the twenty-first century, ... more COVID-19, like previous outbreaks of infectious disease at the turn of the twenty-first century, has reawakened interest in the 1918-1919 Spanish influenza pandemic. As we wrestle with the unknowns and strive to contain the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic operates as a poignant benchmark; how do morbidity, mortality, and case fatality rates of COVID-19 and Spanish flu compare? What can the public health response to the flu-or lack thereof-teach us about social distancing measures in the present? Does the Spanish flu's seasonal waves foretell similar, cyclical resurgences of COVID-19? When will it be safe to lift social distancing measures without seeing a resurgence like that observed in flu cases in 1918-1919? With pandemic, past and present, on everyone's minds, it seems Elizabeth Outka's Viral Modernism: The Influenza Pandemic and Interwar Literature, published by Columbia University Press earlier this year, couldn't have been released at a more morbidly opportune moment. Irrespective of its timeliness, however, Viral Modernism offers significant contributions to the literary-historical study of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, as well as to the study of transatlantic modernist literature. Original readings of canonical modernist texts, including Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway and Katherine Anne Porter's oft-cited Pale Horse, Pale Rider-essentially the urtext of 1918-1919 influenza pandemicexcavate the lasting aesthetic impacts of the Spanish flu, which left at least fifty million dead worldwide and proved unprecedentedly lethal for otherwise healthy young adults (Tautenberger and Morens 2006). Since Alfred W. Crosby republished the second edition of his 1976 monograph Epidemic and Peace as America's Forgotten Pandemic in 1989, scholars have pondered Spanish flu's marked absence in early twentieth-century literature, even-especially-in the oeuvres of authors who had intimate, first-hand experience of the pandemic, such as
Transforming Contagion, 2019
Rutgers University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2019
American Literary History, 2020
This article reads two early twentieth-century American novels, William Maxwell’s They Came Like ... more This article reads two early twentieth-century American novels, William Maxwell’s They Came Like Swallows (1937) and Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939), in relation to the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918–19 and the history of public health. Beyond serving as a literary record of “America’s forgotten pandemic,” it interprets these novels as experiments in what I term “embodied sociality”: a biocultural model of social life encompassing both the abstract, symbolic dimensions of community belonging and the concrete, biological contours of collective living made visible through the spread of infectious disease. I argue that Swallows and Pale Horse challenge the logic of “modern health citizenship,” which prioritized personal hygiene measures to prevent the spread of influenza through a community, that was promoted in turn-of-the-century public health efforts. Instead, these novels destabilize perceptions of the body as a discrete and potentially impermeable entity, revea...
Journal of Medical Humanities, 2021
Academic programs in the medical/health humanities have proliferated widely in recent years, and ... more Academic programs in the medical/health humanities have proliferated widely in recent years, and the professional, academic, and cultural drivers of this growth promise sustained new program development. In this article, we present the results of a survey sent to representatives of one hundred twenty-four baccalaureate and ten graduate programs in the medical/health humanities to assess the experiences and needs of existing programs. Survey results confirm the interest in and need for a descriptive toolkit as opposed to a prescriptive manual; indicate what data and materials are most needed to support the successful development of new academic programs in the field; and identify areas for future research. Recognizing a need for program development resources, the Health Humanities Consortium (HHC) has initiated the creation of a comprehensive online toolkit. We discuss survey results and the toolkit in relation to the drivers of new program growth. Finally, we describe resources now available through the HHC's new online program toolkit, including existing programs; sample syllabi; sample curricula templates; program rationale; proposal templates; and graduation data.
Journal of Medical Humanities, 2020
COVID-19, like previous outbreaks of infectious disease at the turn of the twenty-first century, ... more COVID-19, like previous outbreaks of infectious disease at the turn of the twenty-first century, has reawakened interest in the 1918-1919 Spanish influenza pandemic. As we wrestle with the unknowns and strive to contain the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic operates as a poignant benchmark; how do morbidity, mortality, and case fatality rates of COVID-19 and Spanish flu compare? What can the public health response to the flu-or lack thereof-teach us about social distancing measures in the present? Does the Spanish flu's seasonal waves foretell similar, cyclical resurgences of COVID-19? When will it be safe to lift social distancing measures without seeing a resurgence like that observed in flu cases in 1918-1919? With pandemic, past and present, on everyone's minds, it seems Elizabeth Outka's Viral Modernism: The Influenza Pandemic and Interwar Literature, published by Columbia University Press earlier this year, couldn't have been released at a more morbidly opportune moment. Irrespective of its timeliness, however, Viral Modernism offers significant contributions to the literary-historical study of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, as well as to the study of transatlantic modernist literature. Original readings of canonical modernist texts, including Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway and Katherine Anne Porter's oft-cited Pale Horse, Pale Rider-essentially the urtext of 1918-1919 influenza pandemicexcavate the lasting aesthetic impacts of the Spanish flu, which left at least fifty million dead worldwide and proved unprecedentedly lethal for otherwise healthy young adults (Tautenberger and Morens 2006). Since Alfred W. Crosby republished the second edition of his 1976 monograph Epidemic and Peace as America's Forgotten Pandemic in 1989, scholars have pondered Spanish flu's marked absence in early twentieth-century literature, even-especially-in the oeuvres of authors who had intimate, first-hand experience of the pandemic, such as
Big Data & Society, 2017
This study identifies and explores evolving concepts of trust and privacy in the context of user-... more This study identifies and explores evolving concepts of trust and privacy in the context of user-generated health data. We define “user-generated health data” as data captured through devices or software (whether purpose built or commercially available) and used outside of traditional clinical settings for tracking personal health data. The investigators conducted qualitative research through semistructured interviews (n = 32) with researchers, health technology start-up companies, and members of the general public to inquire why and how they interact with and understand the value of user-generated health data. We found significant results concerning new attitudes toward trust, privacy, and sharing of health data outside of clinical settings that conflict with regulations governing health data within clinical settings. Members of the general public expressed little concern about sharing health data with the companies that sold the devices or apps they used, and indicated that they r...
Narrative analysis, creative writing, and interactive reflective writing have been identified as ... more Narrative analysis, creative writing, and interactive reflective writing have been identified as valuable for professional identity formation and resilience among medical and premedical students alike. This study proposes that medical student blogs are novel pedagogical tools for fostering peer-to-peer learning in academic medicine and are currently underutilized as a near-peer resource for premedical students to learn about the medical profession. To evaluate the pedagogical utility of medical student blogs for introducing core themes in the medical humanities, the authors conducted qualitative analysis of one hundred seventy-six reflective essays by baccalaureate premedical students written in response to medical student-authored narrative blog posts. Using an iterative thematic approach, the authors identified common patterns in the reflective essays, distilled major themes, coded the essays, and conducted narrative analysis through close reading. Qualitative analysis identified ...
Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Health Humanities, 2021
“Practice” refers both to the repeated exercise of a skill or activity in order to achieve profic... more “Practice” refers both to the repeated exercise of a skill or activity in order to achieve proficiency and the application of a method, skill, or belief. Accordingly, “reflective practice” refers to the ways in which reflection, as a skill and a habit of mind, is first acquired and then utilized by professionals. Within the fields of medicine and medical education, reflective practice encompasses both a praxis – to do the work of healing patients guided by ongoing reflective thought – and the curricular interventions through which medical trainees hone their reflective capacity. As it pertains to reflective practice, “reflection” is “the process of analyzing, questioning, and reframing an experience in order to make an assessment of it for the purposes of learning (reflective learning) and/or to improve practice (reflective practice)” (Aronson, 2011: 200–201). The capacity for reflection as “an epistemology of practice” and “a critical approach to inquiry” (Ng et al., 2015: 263) is considered essential for the provision of competent and compassionate healthcare. Integrating reflective practice into medical education is, therefore, critical to medical trainees’ personal and professional development. Moreover, it functions as an intentional counterbalance to medicine’s “hidden curriculum” – the “set of influences that function at the level of organizational structure and culture” (Hafferty, 1998: 404) – as well as a means of combatting burnout among medical students and early career health professionals (Jennings, 2009). Closely aligned with the philosophy of Narrative Medicine (Murphy et al., 2018; Wald & Reis, 2010) and rooted in the practice of literary close reading, as well as health humanities methods more broadly, reflective practice in medical education is fostered through a combination of assigned readings, structured or unstructured writing exercises, and/or small-group discussions tailored to promote engaged, critical consideration of the cultural and sociopolitical dimensions of healthcare and deliberate professional identity development.
Journal of Medical Humanities, 2021
Academic programs in the medical/health humanities have proliferated widely in recent years, and ... more Academic programs in the medical/health humanities have proliferated widely in recent years, and the professional, academic, and cultural drivers of this growth promise sustained new program development. In this article, we present the results of a survey sent to representatives of one hundred twenty-four baccalaureate and ten graduate programs in the medical/health humanities to assess the experiences and needs of existing programs. Survey results confirm the interest in and need for a descriptive toolkit as opposed to a prescriptive manual; indicate what data and materials are most needed to support the successful development of new academic programs in the field; and identify areas for future research. Recognizing a need for program development resources, the Health Humanities Consortium (HHC) has initiated the creation of a comprehensive online toolkit. We discuss survey results and the toolkit in relation to the drivers of new program growth. Finally, we describe resources now available through the HHC’s new online program toolkit, including existing programs; sample syllabi; sample curricula templates; program rationale; proposal templates; and graduation data.
American Literary History, 2020
This article reads two early twentieth-century American novels, William Maxwell’s They Came Like ... more This article reads two early twentieth-century American novels, William Maxwell’s They Came Like Swallows (1937) and Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939), in relation to the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918–19 and the history of public health. Beyond serving as a literary record of “America’s forgotten pandemic,” it interprets these novels as experiments in what I term “embodied sociality”: a biocultural model of social life encompassing both the abstract, symbolic dimensions of community belonging and the concrete, biological contours of collective living made visible through the spread of infectious disease. I argue that Swallows and Pale Horse challenge the logic of “modern health citizenship,” which prioritized personal hygiene measures to prevent the spread of influenza through a community, that was promoted in turn-of-the-century public health efforts. Instead, these novels destabilize perceptions of the body as a discrete and potentially impermeable entity, revealing how to belong to a community is to be susceptible to the unseen agents of disease that move between bodies in close proximity, as well as to be, albeit unwittingly, a potential carrier of disease. Attending to embodied sociality as made visible by the flu, these novels necessitate a new way of writing pandemic—one that blends the narrative conventions of plague writing and autopathography. In so doing, I contend, Pale Horse and Swallows invite us to reimagine embodiment and community belonging by holding the local and global, personal and political, individual and collective dimensions of pandemic together.
The Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, 2019
Hektoen International: A Journal of Medical Humanities, 2018
English Language Notes, 2018
This article situates early twentieth-century Latinx fiction within the intertwined histories of ... more This article situates early twentieth-century Latinx fiction within the intertwined histories of public health and border surveillance along the Rio Grande to reveal a “borderland biopolitics” unique to the US-Mexico border region. Drawing on three early twentieth-century novels—Daniel Venegas’s "Adventures of Don Chipote," Américo Paredes’s "George Washington Gómez," and Jovita González and Eve Raleigh’s "Caballero"—it adds another layer of historical nuance to studies of Latinx literature by demonstrating
the profound, pervasive influence that epidemiological science and public health policy have had in shaping national identity politics in the borderlands. Because militarized border control evolves from public health efforts, reframing analyses of Latinx fiction to read for public health provides fresh insight into institutionalized forms of discrimination and
social injustice that continue to condition Latinx lives in the US-Mexico borderlands.
In recent years, parents have expressed a greater fear of the potential risks and complications a... more In recent years, parents have expressed a greater fear of the potential risks and complications associated with state-mandated vaccination. Interlocutors from either side of the debate over compulsory pediatric vaccination evaluate risk and responsibility relative to what I term an “ethics of immunity” especially attuned to the biological realities of community living. Looking to the language used in mommy blogs and medical history, mission statements and memoir, this chapter demonstrates the effect that scalar perceptions of immunity, social obligation, and community belonging have upon the logic parents and public health officials use to justify vaccine compliance or exemption. I argue that the risks and rewards associated with vaccination are assessed relative to scale, which frames vaccination as either a personal or public health intervention, one that preferences either the health of a single body or the collective body politic. By attending to scale, this chapter directs the vaccine debate away from discussions of scientific illiteracy, conspiracy theories or capitalist exploitation, reframing it as a contemporary exemplar of public health’s greatest challenge: its need to adequately account for the individual in the design of population-level interventions.
This essay appears as chapter three in the collection "Transforming Contagion: Risky Contacts among Bodies, Disciplines, and Nations," edited by Breanne Fahs, Annika Mann, Eric Swank, and Sarah Stage .
Big Data and Society, 2017
This study identifies and explores evolving concepts of trust and privacy in the context of user-... more This study identifies and explores evolving concepts of trust and privacy in the context of user-generated health data. We define ‘‘user-generated health data’’ as data captured through devices or software (whether purpose built or commercially available) and used outside of traditional clinical settings for tracking personal health data. The investigators conducted qualitative research through semistructured interviews (n ¼ 32) with researchers, health technology startup companies, and members of the general public to inquire why and how they interact with and understand the value of
user-generated health data. We found significant results concerning new attitudes toward trust, privacy, and sharing of health data outside of clinical settings that conflict with regulations governing health data within clinical settings. Members of the general public expressed little concern about sharing health data with the companies that sold the devices or apps
they used, and indicated that they rarely read the ‘‘terms and conditions’’ detailing how their data may be exploited by the company or third-party affiliates before consenting to them. In contrast, interviews with researchers revealed significant resistance among potential research participants to sharing their user-generated health data for purposes
of scientific study. The widespread rhetoric of personalization and social sharing in ‘‘user-generated culture’’ appears to facilitate an understanding of user-generated health data that deemphasizes the risk of exploitation in favor of loosely defined benefits to individual and social well-being. We recommend clarification and greater transparency of regulations
governing data sharing related to health.
The Journal of Medical Humanities, Nov 30, 2023
People with disabilities (PWD) comprise a significant part of the population yet experience some ... more People with disabilities (PWD) comprise a significant part of the population yet experience some of the most profound health disparities. Among the greatest barriers to quality care are inadequate health professions education related to caring for PWD. Drawing upon the expertise of health professions educators in medicine, public health, nursing, social work, and physician assistant programs, this forum showcases innovative methods for teaching core disability skills and concepts grounded in disability studies and the health humanities. Each of the essays offers practical guidance for developing curricular interventions appropriate for students at various levels of training and familiarity with disability to be implemented in classroom discussions, case-based learning, lectures, panels, and clinical simulations across the full spectrum of pre-health and health professions education.
Medical Teacher, Oct 28, 2022
COVID-19, like previous outbreaks of infectious disease at the turn of the twenty-first century, ... more COVID-19, like previous outbreaks of infectious disease at the turn of the twenty-first century, has reawakened interest in the 1918-1919 Spanish influenza pandemic. As we wrestle with the unknowns and strive to contain the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic operates as a poignant benchmark; how do morbidity, mortality, and case fatality rates of COVID-19 and Spanish flu compare? What can the public health response to the flu-or lack thereof-teach us about social distancing measures in the present? Does the Spanish flu's seasonal waves foretell similar, cyclical resurgences of COVID-19? When will it be safe to lift social distancing measures without seeing a resurgence like that observed in flu cases in 1918-1919? With pandemic, past and present, on everyone's minds, it seems Elizabeth Outka's Viral Modernism: The Influenza Pandemic and Interwar Literature, published by Columbia University Press earlier this year, couldn't have been released at a more morbidly opportune moment. Irrespective of its timeliness, however, Viral Modernism offers significant contributions to the literary-historical study of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, as well as to the study of transatlantic modernist literature. Original readings of canonical modernist texts, including Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway and Katherine Anne Porter's oft-cited Pale Horse, Pale Rider-essentially the urtext of 1918-1919 influenza pandemicexcavate the lasting aesthetic impacts of the Spanish flu, which left at least fifty million dead worldwide and proved unprecedentedly lethal for otherwise healthy young adults (Tautenberger and Morens 2006). Since Alfred W. Crosby republished the second edition of his 1976 monograph Epidemic and Peace as America's Forgotten Pandemic in 1989, scholars have pondered Spanish flu's marked absence in early twentieth-century literature, even-especially-in the oeuvres of authors who had intimate, first-hand experience of the pandemic, such as
Transforming Contagion, 2019
Rutgers University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2019
American Literary History, 2020
This article reads two early twentieth-century American novels, William Maxwell’s They Came Like ... more This article reads two early twentieth-century American novels, William Maxwell’s They Came Like Swallows (1937) and Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939), in relation to the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918–19 and the history of public health. Beyond serving as a literary record of “America’s forgotten pandemic,” it interprets these novels as experiments in what I term “embodied sociality”: a biocultural model of social life encompassing both the abstract, symbolic dimensions of community belonging and the concrete, biological contours of collective living made visible through the spread of infectious disease. I argue that Swallows and Pale Horse challenge the logic of “modern health citizenship,” which prioritized personal hygiene measures to prevent the spread of influenza through a community, that was promoted in turn-of-the-century public health efforts. Instead, these novels destabilize perceptions of the body as a discrete and potentially impermeable entity, revea...
Journal of Medical Humanities, 2021
Academic programs in the medical/health humanities have proliferated widely in recent years, and ... more Academic programs in the medical/health humanities have proliferated widely in recent years, and the professional, academic, and cultural drivers of this growth promise sustained new program development. In this article, we present the results of a survey sent to representatives of one hundred twenty-four baccalaureate and ten graduate programs in the medical/health humanities to assess the experiences and needs of existing programs. Survey results confirm the interest in and need for a descriptive toolkit as opposed to a prescriptive manual; indicate what data and materials are most needed to support the successful development of new academic programs in the field; and identify areas for future research. Recognizing a need for program development resources, the Health Humanities Consortium (HHC) has initiated the creation of a comprehensive online toolkit. We discuss survey results and the toolkit in relation to the drivers of new program growth. Finally, we describe resources now available through the HHC's new online program toolkit, including existing programs; sample syllabi; sample curricula templates; program rationale; proposal templates; and graduation data.
Journal of Medical Humanities, 2020
COVID-19, like previous outbreaks of infectious disease at the turn of the twenty-first century, ... more COVID-19, like previous outbreaks of infectious disease at the turn of the twenty-first century, has reawakened interest in the 1918-1919 Spanish influenza pandemic. As we wrestle with the unknowns and strive to contain the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic operates as a poignant benchmark; how do morbidity, mortality, and case fatality rates of COVID-19 and Spanish flu compare? What can the public health response to the flu-or lack thereof-teach us about social distancing measures in the present? Does the Spanish flu's seasonal waves foretell similar, cyclical resurgences of COVID-19? When will it be safe to lift social distancing measures without seeing a resurgence like that observed in flu cases in 1918-1919? With pandemic, past and present, on everyone's minds, it seems Elizabeth Outka's Viral Modernism: The Influenza Pandemic and Interwar Literature, published by Columbia University Press earlier this year, couldn't have been released at a more morbidly opportune moment. Irrespective of its timeliness, however, Viral Modernism offers significant contributions to the literary-historical study of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, as well as to the study of transatlantic modernist literature. Original readings of canonical modernist texts, including Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway and Katherine Anne Porter's oft-cited Pale Horse, Pale Rider-essentially the urtext of 1918-1919 influenza pandemicexcavate the lasting aesthetic impacts of the Spanish flu, which left at least fifty million dead worldwide and proved unprecedentedly lethal for otherwise healthy young adults (Tautenberger and Morens 2006). Since Alfred W. Crosby republished the second edition of his 1976 monograph Epidemic and Peace as America's Forgotten Pandemic in 1989, scholars have pondered Spanish flu's marked absence in early twentieth-century literature, even-especially-in the oeuvres of authors who had intimate, first-hand experience of the pandemic, such as
Big Data & Society, 2017
This study identifies and explores evolving concepts of trust and privacy in the context of user-... more This study identifies and explores evolving concepts of trust and privacy in the context of user-generated health data. We define “user-generated health data” as data captured through devices or software (whether purpose built or commercially available) and used outside of traditional clinical settings for tracking personal health data. The investigators conducted qualitative research through semistructured interviews (n = 32) with researchers, health technology start-up companies, and members of the general public to inquire why and how they interact with and understand the value of user-generated health data. We found significant results concerning new attitudes toward trust, privacy, and sharing of health data outside of clinical settings that conflict with regulations governing health data within clinical settings. Members of the general public expressed little concern about sharing health data with the companies that sold the devices or apps they used, and indicated that they r...
Narrative analysis, creative writing, and interactive reflective writing have been identified as ... more Narrative analysis, creative writing, and interactive reflective writing have been identified as valuable for professional identity formation and resilience among medical and premedical students alike. This study proposes that medical student blogs are novel pedagogical tools for fostering peer-to-peer learning in academic medicine and are currently underutilized as a near-peer resource for premedical students to learn about the medical profession. To evaluate the pedagogical utility of medical student blogs for introducing core themes in the medical humanities, the authors conducted qualitative analysis of one hundred seventy-six reflective essays by baccalaureate premedical students written in response to medical student-authored narrative blog posts. Using an iterative thematic approach, the authors identified common patterns in the reflective essays, distilled major themes, coded the essays, and conducted narrative analysis through close reading. Qualitative analysis identified ...
Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Health Humanities, 2021
“Practice” refers both to the repeated exercise of a skill or activity in order to achieve profic... more “Practice” refers both to the repeated exercise of a skill or activity in order to achieve proficiency and the application of a method, skill, or belief. Accordingly, “reflective practice” refers to the ways in which reflection, as a skill and a habit of mind, is first acquired and then utilized by professionals. Within the fields of medicine and medical education, reflective practice encompasses both a praxis – to do the work of healing patients guided by ongoing reflective thought – and the curricular interventions through which medical trainees hone their reflective capacity. As it pertains to reflective practice, “reflection” is “the process of analyzing, questioning, and reframing an experience in order to make an assessment of it for the purposes of learning (reflective learning) and/or to improve practice (reflective practice)” (Aronson, 2011: 200–201). The capacity for reflection as “an epistemology of practice” and “a critical approach to inquiry” (Ng et al., 2015: 263) is considered essential for the provision of competent and compassionate healthcare. Integrating reflective practice into medical education is, therefore, critical to medical trainees’ personal and professional development. Moreover, it functions as an intentional counterbalance to medicine’s “hidden curriculum” – the “set of influences that function at the level of organizational structure and culture” (Hafferty, 1998: 404) – as well as a means of combatting burnout among medical students and early career health professionals (Jennings, 2009). Closely aligned with the philosophy of Narrative Medicine (Murphy et al., 2018; Wald & Reis, 2010) and rooted in the practice of literary close reading, as well as health humanities methods more broadly, reflective practice in medical education is fostered through a combination of assigned readings, structured or unstructured writing exercises, and/or small-group discussions tailored to promote engaged, critical consideration of the cultural and sociopolitical dimensions of healthcare and deliberate professional identity development.
Journal of Medical Humanities, 2021
Academic programs in the medical/health humanities have proliferated widely in recent years, and ... more Academic programs in the medical/health humanities have proliferated widely in recent years, and the professional, academic, and cultural drivers of this growth promise sustained new program development. In this article, we present the results of a survey sent to representatives of one hundred twenty-four baccalaureate and ten graduate programs in the medical/health humanities to assess the experiences and needs of existing programs. Survey results confirm the interest in and need for a descriptive toolkit as opposed to a prescriptive manual; indicate what data and materials are most needed to support the successful development of new academic programs in the field; and identify areas for future research. Recognizing a need for program development resources, the Health Humanities Consortium (HHC) has initiated the creation of a comprehensive online toolkit. We discuss survey results and the toolkit in relation to the drivers of new program growth. Finally, we describe resources now available through the HHC’s new online program toolkit, including existing programs; sample syllabi; sample curricula templates; program rationale; proposal templates; and graduation data.
American Literary History, 2020
This article reads two early twentieth-century American novels, William Maxwell’s They Came Like ... more This article reads two early twentieth-century American novels, William Maxwell’s They Came Like Swallows (1937) and Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939), in relation to the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918–19 and the history of public health. Beyond serving as a literary record of “America’s forgotten pandemic,” it interprets these novels as experiments in what I term “embodied sociality”: a biocultural model of social life encompassing both the abstract, symbolic dimensions of community belonging and the concrete, biological contours of collective living made visible through the spread of infectious disease. I argue that Swallows and Pale Horse challenge the logic of “modern health citizenship,” which prioritized personal hygiene measures to prevent the spread of influenza through a community, that was promoted in turn-of-the-century public health efforts. Instead, these novels destabilize perceptions of the body as a discrete and potentially impermeable entity, revealing how to belong to a community is to be susceptible to the unseen agents of disease that move between bodies in close proximity, as well as to be, albeit unwittingly, a potential carrier of disease. Attending to embodied sociality as made visible by the flu, these novels necessitate a new way of writing pandemic—one that blends the narrative conventions of plague writing and autopathography. In so doing, I contend, Pale Horse and Swallows invite us to reimagine embodiment and community belonging by holding the local and global, personal and political, individual and collective dimensions of pandemic together.
The Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, 2019
Hektoen International: A Journal of Medical Humanities, 2018
English Language Notes, 2018
This article situates early twentieth-century Latinx fiction within the intertwined histories of ... more This article situates early twentieth-century Latinx fiction within the intertwined histories of public health and border surveillance along the Rio Grande to reveal a “borderland biopolitics” unique to the US-Mexico border region. Drawing on three early twentieth-century novels—Daniel Venegas’s "Adventures of Don Chipote," Américo Paredes’s "George Washington Gómez," and Jovita González and Eve Raleigh’s "Caballero"—it adds another layer of historical nuance to studies of Latinx literature by demonstrating
the profound, pervasive influence that epidemiological science and public health policy have had in shaping national identity politics in the borderlands. Because militarized border control evolves from public health efforts, reframing analyses of Latinx fiction to read for public health provides fresh insight into institutionalized forms of discrimination and
social injustice that continue to condition Latinx lives in the US-Mexico borderlands.
In recent years, parents have expressed a greater fear of the potential risks and complications a... more In recent years, parents have expressed a greater fear of the potential risks and complications associated with state-mandated vaccination. Interlocutors from either side of the debate over compulsory pediatric vaccination evaluate risk and responsibility relative to what I term an “ethics of immunity” especially attuned to the biological realities of community living. Looking to the language used in mommy blogs and medical history, mission statements and memoir, this chapter demonstrates the effect that scalar perceptions of immunity, social obligation, and community belonging have upon the logic parents and public health officials use to justify vaccine compliance or exemption. I argue that the risks and rewards associated with vaccination are assessed relative to scale, which frames vaccination as either a personal or public health intervention, one that preferences either the health of a single body or the collective body politic. By attending to scale, this chapter directs the vaccine debate away from discussions of scientific illiteracy, conspiracy theories or capitalist exploitation, reframing it as a contemporary exemplar of public health’s greatest challenge: its need to adequately account for the individual in the design of population-level interventions.
This essay appears as chapter three in the collection "Transforming Contagion: Risky Contacts among Bodies, Disciplines, and Nations," edited by Breanne Fahs, Annika Mann, Eric Swank, and Sarah Stage .
Big Data and Society, 2017
This study identifies and explores evolving concepts of trust and privacy in the context of user-... more This study identifies and explores evolving concepts of trust and privacy in the context of user-generated health data. We define ‘‘user-generated health data’’ as data captured through devices or software (whether purpose built or commercially available) and used outside of traditional clinical settings for tracking personal health data. The investigators conducted qualitative research through semistructured interviews (n ¼ 32) with researchers, health technology startup companies, and members of the general public to inquire why and how they interact with and understand the value of
user-generated health data. We found significant results concerning new attitudes toward trust, privacy, and sharing of health data outside of clinical settings that conflict with regulations governing health data within clinical settings. Members of the general public expressed little concern about sharing health data with the companies that sold the devices or apps
they used, and indicated that they rarely read the ‘‘terms and conditions’’ detailing how their data may be exploited by the company or third-party affiliates before consenting to them. In contrast, interviews with researchers revealed significant resistance among potential research participants to sharing their user-generated health data for purposes
of scientific study. The widespread rhetoric of personalization and social sharing in ‘‘user-generated culture’’ appears to facilitate an understanding of user-generated health data that deemphasizes the risk of exploitation in favor of loosely defined benefits to individual and social well-being. We recommend clarification and greater transparency of regulations
governing data sharing related to health.
Journal of Medical Humanities, 2020
A review of Elizabeth Outka's "Viral Modernism: The Influenza Pandemic and Interwar Literature" (... more A review of Elizabeth Outka's "Viral Modernism: The Influenza Pandemic and Interwar Literature" (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020).
The Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, 2020
A short reflection on Henry James's "Daisy Miller" and Josephine Ensign's "Witness: On Telling," ... more A short reflection on Henry James's "Daisy Miller" and Josephine Ensign's "Witness: On Telling," published on The Intima's Crossroads Blog.
Journal of Medical Humanities, 2023
People with disabilities (PWD) comprise a significant part of the population yet experience some ... more People with disabilities (PWD) comprise a significant part of the population yet experience some of the most profound health disparities. Among the greatest barriers to quality care are inadequate health professions education related to caring for PWD. Drawing upon the expertise of health professions educators in medicine, public health, nursing, social work, and physician assistant programs, this forum showcases innovative methods for teaching core disability skills and concepts grounded in disability studies and the health humanities. Each of the essays offers practical guidance for developing curricular interventions appropriate for students at various levels of training and familiarity with disability to be implemented in classroom discussions, case-based learning, lectures, panels, and clinical simulations across the full spectrum of pre-health and health professions education.