Global Health Humanities Working Group - Consortium of Universities for Global Health

The CUGH Global Health Humanities (GHH) Working Group seeks to explore global health through diverse humanities perspectives: history, literature, personal narrative, philosophy, ethics, creative arts, religious traditions, and cognitive and social sciences, in the effort to illuminate dimensions of human experience hitherto neglected in current global health activities and scholarship. We welcome health professionals and trainees, educators, and global health advocates from around the world to join our efforts. Our activities include: (1) sharing and discussing the emerging literature in GHH; (2) identifying questions, developing projects, and writing articles pertinent to GHH; (3) examining pedagogies for teaching health humanities in different cultures and contexts; (4) participating in conferences on global health and GHH.

If you are interested in joining this group, please contact quentin.eichbaum@vanderbilt.edu

Roster

Quentin Eichbaum – Vanderbilt University Medical Center, USA (Chair)
Charles-Antoine Barbeau – University of Toronto, Canada (Co-chair)
Kathryn Jacobsen – University of Richmond, USA
Revathi Ravi – Massachusetts General Hospital/HMS, USA
Tommaso Pomerani – medical student, Italy
Rosemary Jolly – Pennsylvania State University, USA
Abidemi Fasanmi – Georgia State University, USA
Kalimah Ibrahim – Buckinghamshire New University, UK
Nomusa Mngoma – Queen’s University Centre for Studies in Primary Care, Canada
Fella Benabed – Badji Mokhtar-Annaba University, Algeria
Kristine Muñoz – University of Iowa, USA
Michelle E. Anderson – University of Southern California, USA
Andres F. Diaz – University of Arizona College of Medicine, USA
Joanne Hunt – National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), USA
Anika Agrawal – Medical College of Wisconsin, USA
Elias Snyder – University of Maryland School of Nursing, USA
Brenda Wilson – University of California – San Diego, USA
Denis Regnier – University of Global Health Equity, Rwanda
Keith Martin – Consortium of Universities for Global Health (Ex-Officio)
Stefanie Theuring – Institute of International Health, Charité-Universitätsmedizin, Germany

Members’ Biosketches and Interests

MEMBERS’ BIOSKETCHES AND INTERESTS IN GHH

Quentin Eichbaum (GHH Chair) is a professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology and Professor of Medical Education and Administration at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He is a member of the CUGH Board of Directors and immediate past chair of the CUGH Education Committee. He developed and directs a unique health humanities course for medical students at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine with a focus on meta/neurocognition. He co-chairs the international Health Humanities Consortium (https://healthhumanitiesconsortium.com/) and is a member of the FRAHME Integration Committee of the AAMC. He works with new and established medical schools in Africa (through CONSAMS and AFREhealth).

Current interests: Meta/neurocognition, intercultural empathy, medical and health humanities curricula in low resource settings; ‘decolonizing the mind’ in global health; narrative medicine, narratives of illness in global health; creative writing; visual arts.

Charles-Antoine Barbeau-Meunier (GHH co-chair) is a resident physician and empathy scholar with training in media studies (B.A.), sociology (M.A.), medicine (M.D.) and neuroimaging (PhD). He is currently completing medical residency in psychiatry at the University of Toronto. In his work on empathy, Charles-Antoine has developed a five-pillar framework to model the expression of empathy beyond individual factors to include social, cultural and institutional contexts. He previously served as the Government of Canada’s Youth Delegate to the World Health Assembly and PAHO’s Directing Council.

Current interests: Empathy in social, cultural and institutional contexts; health, youth and social media use; climate action and planetary health

Kathryn H. Jacobsen is professor and chair of the Department of Health Studies at the University of Richmond (Virginia, USA). She co-leads the CUGH Global Health Educators Community (GHECo) and is a past co-chair of the CUGH Sub-committee on Master’s and Undergraduate Degrees in Global Health. Her interests within the global health humanities center on defining the scope of the field and integrating diverse voices and methods from the humanities into classroom-based and non-clinical experiential global health teaching and learning.

Revathi Ravi, MD, MPH, is an Instructor in Medicine and Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Attending Physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. After double boarding in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, she completed her Master’s in Public Health from the Harvard T. Chan School of Public Health and a fellowship in Global Health and Human Rights from Massachusetts General Hospital. She has spent over a decade examining and practicing in various health systems globally, analyzing structural violence and power through the narratives of patients living with HIV/AIDS in India, Botswana and Uganda. Her global health practice has included working in very low resource settings as a physician in rural Kenya, Botswana, and tribal India. She critically examines issues of human rights, emotional intelligence, and global health humanities and practice through the lens of power as a super determinant for health outcomes and a path towards global health solutions. She has taught medical humanities and emotional intelligence throughout India, in tribal settings and urban medical colleges, as well as in the United States to practicing medical and surgical residents.

Current interests: intersection of emotional intelligence, power, human rights, social justice, and health equity; how emotional intelligence can be used to improve health outcomes and deliver on social justice for individuals.

Tommaso Pomerani is a medical student in Florence, Italy. He worked as director of the biggest international medical exchange program (IFMSA), from 2017 to 2018, and as a member of the CUGH Trainee Advisory Committee (TAC) from 2019 to 2021. His work included the development of training programs and educational activities on global health, medical ethics and cultural competencies. At the local level, he co-organized and co-facilitated a student-led elective course on global health promoting students’ engagement and the integration between medical schools and the communities they serve.

Current interests: definition of global health humanities and how to teach it, cross-cultural empathy, global mental health and ethnopsychiatry, global capitalism and health, decolonization of global health.

Rosemary Jolly is the Sparks Chair of Literature and Human Rights at the Pennsylvania State University. She has co-founded two rape crisis clinics in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and has worked on rolling gender-based violence prevention into HIV prevention programmes. She is author, most recently, of The Effluent Eye: Narratives for Decolonial Right-making (Minnesota UP, 2024).

Abidemi O. Fasanmi is an advocate, researcher, and a physician by training, with gender, and global health development experience. She has over 15 years of interdisciplinary and multisectoral experience with government, non-governmental, and academia across three continents (Africa, Europe, and North America). She is interested innovative research approaches that lead to transformative solutions such as exploring the synergy between medicine and the humanities particularly among underserved populations.

Current interests: Transdisciplinary approaches that address socio- medical issues by identifying local epistemologies within indigenous healing practices; compassion medicine and medical humanities; pedagogies and methodologies based on indigenous knowledge

Kalimah Ibrahiim is an Associate Professor of Occupational Therapy and Programme Director at Buckinghamshire New University in the UK. She is a member of the Board of Directors at the BAOT/RCOT and a member of the CUGH Educational Products Subcommittee. With training in media and cultural studies (B.A.) and public health (MPH), and has worked in a variety of clinical settings, including health and social care, prisons, and quality improvement. With interests in blending indigenous science and traditional knowledge to improve global health equity and the health of the African diaspora, particularly focused on the Caribbean community whose ancestors were enslaved and taken to the Caribbean and their descendants, some of whom now reside in the global north. Her current research is developing an intervention to improve digital literacy as a means to enhance the skills of young people who are not in education, employment, or training (NEET), and a study using arts-based research exploring the narratives of healthcare workers from the African diaspora.

Current interests: global health humanities; blending indigenous science and traditional knowledge; health policy and systems research; prisoner health; digital and health literacy; social transformation; community co-creation.

Nomusa Mngoma, PhD, is a Research Scientist in the Department of Family Medicine, Centre for Studies in Primary Care. She is an Associate Professor of Rehabilitation Therapy, with a joint appointment in Global Development Studies at Queen’s University, Canada. She is a global health practitioner with research interests in public health promotion, community-engaged research, and behavioural change interventions. Social determinants of health are at the core of her work, with a particular focus on poverty and mental health, particularly, in rural areas, HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence. She is also interested in indigenous ways of being, health and wellness.

Current interests: Storytelling, theatre-based research methods, gender-based violence, youth mental health, and exploration of how movement and artistic expression influence health and wellbeing.

Fella Benabed is a professor of global Anglophone literature at the English department of Badji Mokhtar-Annaba University in Algeria. In her research, she is interested in the postcolonial, narrative, ecological, and medical approaches to literature. She is a US Department of State alumna: she took part in the Study of the United States Institute on Contemporary American Literature, University of Louisville, Kentucky (2011), and she was a Fulbright senior visiting scholar at Columbia University in the city of New York (2021) where she worked on “Nervous Conditions in African Literature.” She led a research project entitled “Literature and Medicine: Nurturing Clinical Empathy and Holistic Care,” and she authored a book entitled Applied Global Health Humanities: Readings in the Global Anglophone Novel (De Gruyter, 2024).

Kristine Muñoz is Professor of Spanish and Director of the Global Health Studies Program at the University of Iowa. Her research is centered primarily in urban Colombia, with particular focus on peace education and public memories of conflict. Her digital humanities projects include a website designed to circulate counternarratives of Medellín that decenter media glamorization of narcoterrorism, and a curated collection of health narratives in Spanish and English designed for curriculum and instruction.

Current interests: storytelling, oral history, maternal health among young Colombian adolescents, using the arts in health, illness, and healing

Michelle E. Anderson is a Research Specialist at the University of Southern California’s Institute on Inequalities in Global Health, where her work focuses on rights-based methodologies for enhancing health outcomes, addressing disparities in access to services, and exploring the intersections between health, law and policy, and social determinants of health, often with a focus on issues of sexual and reproductive health and rights. She received her PhD from the University of Cape Town in Media Studies and Historical Studies (oral history) with a focus on transitional justice, and holds an M.Phil in Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation from Trinity College Dublin, and B.A.s from Southern Methodist University in Human Rights and Anthropology.

Current interests: the role of media in the politics of health and health outcomes; oral history as pedagogy in health education; narrative medicine; sexual and reproductive health and rights; the relationship between conflict recovery and reconciliation, physical health, and social health.

Andres F. Diaz is an MD/PhD at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, Tucson. In his research, Andres is exploring the optimization of gamma-delta T cells as a potential adoptive cell therapy alternative for pediatric hematologic and solid tumors. More broadly, through his research and future work, Andres plans to increase access to immunotherapies and cellular therapies with children with cancer in low-resource and underserved settings. Andres’s work has been significantly shaped by medical anthropologists and humanists, particularly Paul Farmer, Joao Biehl, Seth Holmes, and Amy Moran Thomas. As a future pediatric oncologist, he plans to integrate these fields and the principles of medicine humanities into his medical practice.

Current Interests: Increasing access and optimizing implementation of immunotherapies and cellular therapies in low-resource settings; Implementation of and access to global pediatric palliative care; Accompaniment as a form of healing.

Joanne Hunt (Joey) is a NIH Post-baccalaureate Intramural Research Fellow in Dr. Thomas Quinn’s International HIV and STD Laboratory within the Lab of Immunoregulation at NIAID. She currently works on seroepidemiological studies of HIV and other infectious diseases in multiple populations across the US and in Africa. She received her BA in Sociology and Medical Anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2022, during which she held a research assistantship at the UNC Center for AIDS Research. Joey’s background in social science research highlighted the importance of considering the macrosocial determinants of health in conceptualizing, implementing, and evaluating intervention studies. Her goal is to identify and analyze culturally coherent measures of biological and social factors and, ultimately, to apply them toward novel strategies that facilitate engagement in infectious disease prevention and care. She joined this working group to collaborate with like-minded humanities and social science advocates to address the continued transdisciplinary collaboration necessary to address global health concerns of our time.

Current interests: medical sociology and anthropology, social determinants of health, social epidemiology, implementation science, public health surveillance, global capitalism and health, decolonization of global health

Anika Agrawal is an MD candidate at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Prior to medical school, she completed her undergraduate training in Cognitive Sciences and Biochemistry from Rice University in Houston, TX.

Current interests: medical ethics, global surgery, integration of non-Western traditions into the practice of medicine, narrative writing and storytelling

Elias Snyder, PhD, NP, RN, ACHPN (he/they), is an Assistant Professor of Global Health at the University of Maryland School of Nursing. Elias is a practicing nurse practitioner, double board certified in primary care and palliative care/hospice. Some of his favorite projects include co-authoring nutrition trainings for the Rwanda National Policy on Nutrition, formalizing a global clinician education program at FAME hospital in Tanzania, and leading a global learning project to improve models of palliative care in Tanzania and the U.S.. His research focuses on reciprocal, global learning specifically in the areas of palliative and end-of-life care and grief. Dr. Snyder’s work intentionally bridges Traditional Wisdom and Indigenous science with Euro-Western, evidence-based research through a lens of decolonization.

Current interests: Reciprocal, global learning models; Decolonizing global palliative and end-of-life care; Bridging Indigenous and Euro-western Science; Reconnection to ancestral healing traditions

Brenda K. Wilson, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Scholar and Lecturer at the University of California – San Diego [UCSD], with a doctorate in the Medical and Health Humanities, a master’s degree in Natural Resources and Environmental Studies, and a bachelor’s degree in Human Biology. Her research and teaching focus on the structural and social determinants of health and health disparities, with particular emphasis on marginalized populations such as displaced migrants and refugees, racial/ethnic minorities, and the working poor. She has conducted photo-ethnographic fieldwork with Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic and migrants in India to understand how health inequalities are produced, deployed, and experienced. Her current research program seeks to better understand the health trajectories of asylum seekers from departure to resettlement, specifically those who cross the US-Mexico border.

Current interests: transnational migration, race and gender studies, health politics, histories of health inequities; decolonizing global health; precarious employment; climate change/environmental destruction, and justice-oriented pedagogy/praxis.

Denis Regnier currently serves as Head of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE) in Rwanda. His academic journey commenced with a foundation in philosophy at Université Paris 8, followed by an MSc in Anthropology of Learning and Cognition and a PhD in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). This educational pathway not only equipped Dr. Regnier with a profound understanding of human cultures and societies but also instilled in him a deep commitment to leveraging anthropology to address pressing global challenges. His scholarship includes significant contributions to the understanding of social exclusion, with his research on the legacy of slavery in Madagascar reflecting his dedication to addressing social inequalities and injustices through academic inquiry. His work is deeply rooted in an inclusive and decolonial pedagogy, aiming to dismantle hegemonic structures within academia and contribute to the advancement of social and epistemic justice.

Stefanie Theuring is a German Research Associate at the Institute of International Health, Center for Global Health at Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany. She holds advanced degrees (MSc; Dr. rer. medic.; habilitation) in Health Sciences and International Health, coming from a background in Applied Social Sciences/Social Work (diploma). Her specialization lies in Global Health research predominantly in Sub-Saharan African settings, where she has been focusing on thematic areas of social determinants of health, reproductive health, maternal healthcare, health systems research, implementation research and HIV prevention. She is also working on studies in the field of migration and health, focusing on marginalized migrant populations in Germany.

Current interests: Reproductive rights; abortion care; nexus between reproductive rights and political systems/democracy; inter- and transdisciplinary and participatory research methods using narrative or arts-based approaches

Current Interests and Projects

GHH WORKING GROUP’S CURRENT INTERESTS AND PROJECTS:

1. Defining the scope of global health humanities
2. Intercultural empathy
3. Developing health humanities curricula in low-resource global health settings
4. Story and narrative medicine in global health
5. Narrative structures of illness in global health
6. Medical and health humanities in LMICs/non-Western settings
7. Practical ethics in non-Western moral traditions
8. Decolonizing global health
9. Humanitarian crises and aid

Resources

MEMBERS’ PUBLICATIONS OF INTEREST

Addiss, DG. Mindfulness, compassion, and the foundations of global health ethics. In: Monteiro LM, Compson J, Musten RF, eds., Practitioner’s guide to ethics and mindfulness-based interventions. New York, NY: Springer 2017; 295-322.

Addiss, DG. Spiritual themes and challenges in global health. J Med Humanit 2018; 39:337–348. doi 10.1007/s10912-015-9378-9. https://rdcu.be/4lzv

Addiss DG, Amon JJ. Apology and Unintended harm in global health. Health and Human Rights Journal 2019, 21:19-32.

Addiss DG. Compassion in disasters. Health Progress 2019, November-December: 39-44. https://www.chausa.org/publications/health-progress/article/november-december-2019/compassion-in-disasters

Addiss DG. When the student is ready, the teacher appears. In Rotbart H, ed. Miracles we have seen: America’s leading physicians share stories they can’t forget. Deerfield Beach, Florida: HCI Books 2016; 190-197. https://amzn.com/0757319378

Barbeau-Meunier (2013). « L’empathie peut-elle changer le monde? Des fondements empathiques de l’action sociale et son rôle vis-à-vis de la crise écologique : recherche interdisciplinaire. » Master’s thesis. Montreal (Quebec, Canada), Université du Québec à Montréal, Master’s in Sociology.

DiPrete Lori. Nicaragua: Excerpts from a Journal, Sojourner, January 1988.

DiPrete Brown, L. (2013) Caminata: A Journey. Global Reflections Press.

DiPrete Brown, L. (2018). Foundations for Global Health Practice. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

DiPrete Brown L. Inter-Professional Competences for Global Health: Insights from Educational Frameworks and Experience at UW-Madison. Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, Volume 42, Issue 4, pp. 32-37, Winter 2014

Eichbaum Q, Reid S, Coly A, Naidu T, Omaswa F. Conceptualizing medical humanities programs in low-resource settings in Africa. Academic Medicine.2019;94(8):1108-1114.

Eichbaum QG, Adams LV, Evert J, Ho M-J, Semali IA, van Schalkwyk SC. Decolonizing Global Health Education: Rethinking Institutional Partnerships and Approaches. Academic Medicine.2020.

Eichbaum Q. The problem with competencies in global health education. Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges.2015;90(4):414-417.

Eichbaum Q. Acquired and Participatory Competencies in Health Professions Education: Definition and Assessment in Global Health. Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges.2017;92(4):468-474.

Eichbaum Q. Collaboration and teamwork in the health professions: rethinking the role of conflict. Academic Medicine.2018;93(4):574-580.

Fasanmi, A. (2018). “Bio-Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa: Re-Examining Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission Strategies for hiv”. In Erotic Subjects and Outlaws. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill | Rodopi. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004392298_009

Fasanmi A., Ayivor S. (2019) Widows, Widowhood, and Society in Africa. In: Yacob-Haliso O., Falola T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of African Women’s Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77030-7_33-1

Futoransky, “Luisa, Juana de Arco, El Portal, Joan of Arc, The Gateway.” (Living Poetry: Women in Translation Collective, Trans.). First Published on Poetry International, 2020.

Howell, J. Exploring Victorian Travel Literature: Disease, Race and Climate (Edinburgh UP, 2014)

Howell, J. Malaria and Victorian Fictions of Empire (Cambridge UP, 2018)

Howell, J Nurse Going Native: Language and Identity in the Colonial Context.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 51.1: 165-81“Nursing Empire: Travel Letters from Africa and the Caribbean.” Studies in Travel Writing 17.1, 62-77

Howell, J Mrs. Seacole Prescribes Hybridity: Constitutional and Maternal Rhetoric in Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands.” Victorian Literature and Culture 38,107-25

Pham TV, Stewart KA,and JP Gagliardi. Humanistic Stories About the Workplace and Resident Wellness: A Missing Connection. Academic Psychiatry, 2020 (), 1-4.https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40596-020-01277-y

Saffran, L. (2020). The world behind the world: art and the climate emergency. The Lancet, 395(10219), 182-183.

Saffran, L. Fiction writing to build empathy and self-awareness in public health practice. In Craig Klugman and Erin Lamb (Eds), Research methods in health humanities (pp 268-284). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2019

Saffran, L. (2017). Emotional life: Exploring contradictions in health behavior through creative writing in public health education. Academic Medicine, 92(9), 1234-1235. https://doi:10.1097/ACM.0000000000001827

Saffran, L. (2017, February 23). The essential role of storytelling in the search for truth. [Blog Post]. Scientific American Guest Blog. Retrieved from https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-essential-role-of-storytelling-in-the-search-for-truth/

Saffran, L. (2014). ‘Only connect’: The case for public health humanities. Medical humanities, 40(2), 105-110. https://doi:10.1136/medhum-2014-010502

Stewart, KA. Transforming Undergraduate Global Health Education Through a Humanities-Focused Curriculum. Pedagogy in Health Promotion. 6(1):9-13, 2020. Special theme issue, Pedagogy for Global Health and Health Promotion. Guest editor: Ashti Doobay-Persaud. https://doi.org/10.1177/2373379919900534

Stewart, K. and K Swain. Global Health Humanities: Defining an Emerging Field.The Lancet [London, England]388(Nov 26):2586-87. [In: Perspectives: The Art of Medicine] http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)32229-2/fulltext?elsca1=etoc; PubMed PMID: 28452322;DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(16)32229-2

Stewart K, Ingold R, de Bruyn M, and KK Swain. Art as Disruption in Global Health Humanities: The Humument Technique, a Sexual and Reproductive Health Archive, and Developing Flexible Student Thinking. In Banner O., N. Carlin, and T.R. Cole (eds.), Teaching Health Humanities, pp319-337, 2019. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/101725331 PDF Here

Stewart K, Loiseau N, Odendahl-James J, Rainer C, and E Alexopoulos. Theatre as a Transformative Learning Experience for US-Based Students of Global Health Ethics. Critical Stages 17:1-16, 2018. Special Issue: Medicine And/In Theatre. http://www.critical-stages.org/17/theatre-as-a-transformative-learning-experience-for-us-based-students-of-global-health-ethics/

St-Pierre Alain, Roy, Barbeau-Meunier et al. (2019). « Le climat s’invite dans nos urgences: Les impacts sur la santé des changements climatiques ». Brief, Fédération médicale étudiante du Québec. March 25 2019.

Ward E, Gillies JCM, Armstrong D, Grant M, Elder A, Burton J, et al. Cultivating compassionate care: why does it matter and what can we do to promote it? Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. 2018;48:71-7.

White MT, Satterfield CA, Blackard JT (2017) Essential competencies in global health research for medical trainees: A narrative review. Medical Teacher 39(9):945-953.

White MT and Evert JE (2014) Developing Ethical Awareness in Global Health: Four Cases for Medical Educators. Developing World Bioethics. 14(3): 111-116.

White MT and Worku N (2013) Administrative Needs of Academic Partnerships at One Ethiopian University: A Pilot Study. Ethiopian Medical Journal. 51(3): 203-7.

White MT (2007) A Right to Benefit from International Research: A New Approach to Capacity Building. Accountability in Research: Policies and Quality Assurance 14:73-92.