School of Medicine

Humanities Expression and Arts Lab

Master
Media Component
Media
Content

AAMC Grant

In 2020, Drs. Nuila, Childress, and Laufman received a $25,000 grant from the AAMC to support the integration of arts and humanities in healthcare. Our project, Tinctures of the Arts: Measuring the Effect of Medical Humanities Activities on Empathy, Burnout, and Communication in Students and Other Learners offered a diverse range of interactive and educational activities, including creative writing and narrative medicine workshops, storytelling events, and a speaker series. We continue to work with our grant partners - Inprint Houston and The Museum of Fine Arts Houston to provide this kind of programming. Our goal is to deepen integrative experiences between healthcare professionals and the arts and humanities, ultimately improving education, practice, and well-being, while amplifying the voices of historically marginalized and vulnerable patient populations.

Outreach

We have two initiatives that focus on the importance of storytelling in healthcare: Off Script and Writing Workshops for healthcare professionals. 

The Off Script event is held twice a year and encourages community members to submit story ideas related to a specific theme, offering opportunities to participate in writing workshops and rehearse before performing their narratives for a mixed audience of in-person and virtual attendees. In an article published in the Journal of Medical Humanities, Drs. Andrew Childress and Woods Nash argue that participating in Off Script can improve participants' narrative skills, empowering them to engage more effectively in health advocacy and patient care. 

Additionally, since 2016, we have organized and hosted writing workshops for healthcare professionals led by a local literary arts organization, Inprint. These workshops are opportunities for writers to practice and improve their writing skills. HEAL is also in the process of creating a podcast series featuring stories from Off Script and these writing workshops set to be released to the public in the near future.

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Meet the Team

People
First Name
Ricardo
Middle Name
Ernesto
Last Name
Nuila
Honorific Title
M.D., B.A.
Associate Professor
First Name
Andrew
Last Name
Childress
Honorific Title
Ph.D., M.A.
Assistant Professor of Medicine
First Name
Stacy
Middle Name
Renee
Last Name
Nigliazzo
Instructor
First Name
Burke
Middle Name
Thomas
Last Name
Nixon
Instructor
First Name
Larry
Middle Name
E
Last Name
Laufman
Honorific Title
Ed.D.
Assistant Professor