Rachel Balaban | ASaP co-founder
Pittsburgh is the home of the Andy Warhol Museum, the Duquesne Incline, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the famous Primanti Brothers restaurant (and sandwich). Recently, Rachel visited Steel City, but only managed to get to the first two of these landmarks.
The purpose of the visit was to present at the 21st Annual Conference of The American Society For Bioethics and Humanities (Oct 24-27, 2019) along with Dr. Jay Baruch and Dr. Stacey Springs.
Jay and Stacey have been long-time partners of ASaP as well as collaborators on the Rhode Island Arts and Health Network, the subject of the presentation. This network is a collaboration between the Rhode Island Dept. of Health, the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts (RISCA), medical clinicians, public health officers, and over 20 community artists.
Their talk addressed the challenges and benefits of working on an interdisciplinary team whose goal is to create a statewide health plan, the first-of-its-kind, to advance the integration of arts, arts therapies, health and well-being. How to:
1. Develop a strategy for interdisciplinary discussion that respects the voices of diverse stakeholders.
2. Anticipate possible obstacles to productive conversations.
3. Bridge interdisciplinary divides to build consensus on process and outcomes for projects.
The audience posed many engaging questions in the Q&A following their talk. Among those who attended was Dr. Rita Charon, physician, literary scholar and the founder and executive director of the Columbia Narrative Medicine program at Columbia University. Her presence at their talk and her insightful questions were clear evidence of her support for their work and her willingness to push boundaries of medicine to accept the arts for the power they offer.
Rachel also met Steven Langan, Director of Medical Humanities at University of Nebraska Omaha. He is a talented writer as well as a visionary, and she is looking forward to collaborating with the University of Nebraska Omaha in the near future. Stay tuned!
