In 2014, along with Dr. Benjamin Oldfield, I founded AfterWards, a program in Narrative Medicine in the Charlotte Bloomberg Children's Center at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD. For over a decade, AfterWards has helped build community, bolster resiliency, and strengthen patient connections among caregivers of all kinds. AfterWards has engaged a diverse community of doctors, nurses, social workers, child life workers, and therapists who have met on a monthly basis to read, write, and reflect on literature, film, artwork, and music. Sessions have explored topics such as "Bearing Witness to Suffering," "Patient or Disease," "Stories behind Illness," and "Finding Meaning in Medicine."
In addition to open, monthly drop-in sessions, I have also conduct dedicated sessions in the Department of Psychiatry, the Division of Pediatric Oncology, and for other groups.
You can read more about AfterWards in the
The Atlantic Monthly.
Currently I co-teach an elective course in Narrative Medicine to residents in the department of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Recently published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, with Marta Hanson, PhD: "Pandemic Patterns: How Artistic Depictions of Past Epidemics Illuminate Thematic and Structural Repsonses to COVID-19 Today." DOI: 10.1007/s11606-021-07214-5