International Health Humanities Network Membership
Carlos Miranda
Graduate student in American Studies
Saba Mirikermanshahi
I'm a medical student from Iran, and I started working in the field of Health Humanities 5 years ago. In my country, Iran, we hold an annual national olympiad for medical students in different areas, and one of the fields is "Inters Disciplinary Studies in Health Humanities". This olympiad introduced m to the field, and I won 3 medals. Later I focused on the philosophy of Medicine, specifically Phenomenology and existentialism in Medicine. Narrative Medicine and Bioethics interest me as well. Among the projects I have been working on, I have contributed as co-founder ad the chief editor of the Philosophy of Medicine service in the first Iranian student magazine of Health Humanities. I also tried to help the development of medical humanities in my country through translation, writing, and teaching and coaching younger medical students. I also tried to present the idea and concept of health humanities in academic events in Berlin, Muscat, and Tehran and online opportunities I had.
Above all, my primary interest is to join the international dialogue around Health Humanities, and I hope joining this network would greatly help this purpose.
to learn more about me I suggest you visit my Profile on USERN Network at following link
https://usern.tums.ac.ir/User/CV/Sabamirik
Haley Misch
Medical Humanities graduate
Ranit Mishori
Academic Family Physician working in Global Health, interested in humanitiies, media and communication. Works in human rights, with torture survivors, refugees and on gender-based violence issues.
Irene Mitta
Irene Mitta is a poet and a playwright, who currently teaches art in two elementary schools. She was the recipient of the Villagers Theatre New Playwrights Series Award in June of 2016, for her play, Five Chairs. Irene is an associate member of the Dramatists Guild of America (2016). She is a Level III Reiki Healer. Irene is also a painter/printmaker at her own, Healing Minds Studio, which was established in 2018 to bring healing artwork into a multiplicity of healthcare environments.
Mary Mittelman
Mary S. Mittelman is an epidemiologist who has been evaluating psychosocial interventions for people with cognitive impairment and their family members for more than two decades. She received a Dr.P.H. in psychiatric epidemiology and an M.S. in biostatistics from Columbia University School of Public Health. Dr. Mittelman is Director of the Psychosocial Research and Support Program of the NYU Comprehensive Center on Brain Aging and Research Professor in the NYU Langone Medical Center Department of Psychiatry. For more than 20 years she was Principal Investigator of the NYU-Spouse Caregiver Intervention (NYUCI) study, first funded by the NIH in 1987. Dr Mittelman is also the Director of the Psychosocial Core of the NYU-Alzheimer’s Disease Center; there is no other ADC with a Psychosocial Core, which evolved from the NYUCI, and has been providing support and conducting assessments of participants and caregivers since 1998.
The NYUCI is unique in several ways. It includes family members in addition to the primary caregiver, It is available for the entire course of the illness. The study results are based on a randomized controlled trial of more than 400 participants, some of whom participated for as long as 18 years. Publications from the study of the NYUCI provided evidence that counseling and support for spouse caregivers and their families can have a major impact on the time a person with dementia can remain at home and on the well-being of the family caregiver. We have demonstrated the long-term effectiveness of counseling and support for caregivers in reducing symptoms of depression and the severity of their reactions to the behavior of their family members with dementia and in maintaining caregiver physical health. The mechanism through which the intervention achieves these improvements in caregiver well-being is by improving the support and assistance from family members and friends. The intervention’s effects on caregiver well-being lasted through nursing home placement and death of the person with dementia.
The NYU Caregiver Intervention has won many awards, including an award from the National Alliance for Caregiving and the Met Life Foundation in 2010 and the first global award for Alzheimer’s psychosocial research from Alzheimer’s Disease International/ Fondation Mederic Alzheimer (March 2009). Other awards include the annual New York City Family Caregiver Coalition award in 2009, the Maggie Kuhn Award from Presbyterian Senior Services and the Rosalynn Carter Caregiver Leadership Award.
In the past few years, Dr. Mittelman has made a commitment to disseminate research findings to both health care providers and the community at large and to collaborate with community organizations to implement evidence-based psychosocial interventions in community settings. She has collaborated with organizations funded by the United States Administration on Aging, the Rosalynn Carter Institute and the Veteran’s Administration, providing assistance for translations of the NYU Caregiver Intervention in communities around the United States. Replications have been conducted in England, Australia and Israel. With her colleagues, she has written several books for caregivers and health care professionals, including Counseling the Alzheimer’s Caregiver: A Resource for Health Care Professionals, published in 2003 by the American Medical Association. In partnership with a small business, HealthCare Interactive, with funding from the NIA, Dr Mittelman and clinical colleagues are developing web-enabled training for the NYUCI, so it can be disseminated more widely and effectively than has heretofore been possible.
More recently, Dr Mittelman has been evaluating and developing interventions that include the person with dementia together with the caregiver. She received an Alzheimer’s Association Zenith Fellows Award to study a couples counseling intervention. She evaluated the Meet Me at MoMA program, a monthly educational visit to the Museum of Modern Art for people with dementia and their family members. Most recently, in June 2011, she founded a chorus of people with dementia and their family caregivers and conducted a pilot study of its benefits. The chorus named themselves, The Unforgettables, and has continued to rehearse and perform even after the study funding was over. We are currently seeking funding for a larger, multisite study to more definitively demonstrate its effects, using reliable outcome measures, although the pleasure it brings are obvious to the observer.
A short video about the Unforgettables is at: http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/health&id=8311867
An AARP blog titled “The Power of Song” is at:
http://blog.aarp.org/2012/04/12/music-therapy-helps-alzheimers-caregivers/
Fiona Moffatt
A physiotherapist and lecturer at The University of Nottingham. Recently completed a PhD (Working the production line: Productivity and professional identity in the Emergency Department) inspired by sociology of the professions and neo-Foucauldian concepts of governmentality.
Patricia Moran
I am a literature scholar with interests in the intertwined development of psychoanalysis and psychiatry in the twentieth century. I am particularly interested in women's narratives--fictional and biographical--of 'madness.'
Jennifer Moran Stritch
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
Jennifer Moran Stritch is the director of the Loss and Grief Research Group, a part of the Social Sciences ConneXions research collective at Limerick Institute of Technology in Limerick, Ireland. With a background in social care and social work, she lectures in personal development, challenging behaviour, positive ageing and thanatology in the LIT Department of Applied Social Sciences and with the MSc in Loss and Bereavement programme with Irish Hospice/Royal College of Surgeons Ireland. Jennifer’s international practice makes her a frequent keynote speaker and workshop facilitator on aspects of death education and experiences of loss, resilience and growth across the human lifespan. As one of the founding hosts of Death Café Limerick, Jennifer has facilitated Death Café events since November 2015.
Jemma Morgan
Occupational therapist working to harness the therapeutic benefits of arts based interventions to develop the interface between health care and the arts, to reduce the negative impact of gentrification as a result of arts and culture led regeneration in deprived areas.