Narrative Medicine

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. The purpose of AfterWards is to build community, bolster resiliency, and strengthen patient connections among caregivers of all kinds. AfterWards is a diverse community of doctors, nurses, social workers, child life workers, and therapists who meet on a monthly basis to read, write, and reflect on literature, film, artwork, and music. Sessions explore 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 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 Johns Hopkins Children's Center News, The Atlantic Monthly, and in an article Dr. Oldfield and I co-authored for Hopkins 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