International Health Humanities Network Membership

Deborah Biggerstaff, is a Chartered Psychologist specialising in health and arts. She is especially interested in maternal health, mental health and wellbeing, medical education, practical wisdom or phronesis, compassion,creativity, arts and literature. She works in Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, UK.

I am the Impact and Research Fellow for Writing Back, an intergenerational letter writing project that I founded at the University of Leeds. Writing Back matches School of English undergraduate students as pen pals with older, Yorkshire residents. Now in its third year, the project has seen 340 people write to one another so far. I use loneliness measurement tools to map the impact of letter writing on loneliness, mental wellbeing and age-related expectations. 

Rakesh Biswas MD is a professor of Medicine in the People’s College of Medical Sciences,
Bhopal, India. His interests include clinical problem solving applied to patient
centered health care and health education.

He has in the past shared his experiences in clinical problem solving extensively through global
academic journals and books and is currently a deputy editor for BMJ Case reports, UK
(http://casereports.bmj.com/site/about/edboard.xhtml), chief editor for the International Journal
of User Driven Healthcare, US (http://www.igi-global.com/journal/international-journal-user-driven-healthcare/41022 )
and a regional editor for the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, UK
(http://www.wiley.com/bw/editors.asp?ref=1356-1294 ).

He is currently engaged in developing a health care blended-learning ecosystem through a network of multiple learner
stakeholders that includes medical students, health professionals from diverse disciplines and patients along with their
relatives in rural and urban India. As all these stakeholders are computer users communicating through the web with a user
name the network is also known as 'User Driven Health Care' UDHC network.The network has currently piloted in rural and urban Indian locations with encouraging
responses from patients, medical students and global health professionals connected through the web. The network eventually
hopes to propagate 'patient centered learning in India such that medical students and health professionals take pride in
their teamwork toward making a positive change in their patients' lives.It hopes to in this manner utlize patients to build
a vital bridge between basic and clinical science professionals that may translate bedside patient needs to solutions from
the bench.

Former nurse,  midwife,  project worker, manager. RN RM, MNurs

BA(Hons)Fine Art.

Currently involved with newly established community arts centre. Interested in setting up evaluation methods for new arts health projects in North Cambs, South lincs area

Doctoral student, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA

Board-certified music therapist

research interest:  family music therapy

Dr Sarah Blanton is an Assistant Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine, Division of Physical Therapy. She graduated from the University of Virginia in 1987 with a BA degree in biology, from Emory University in 1992 with her masters in physical therapy and received her clinical doctorate in physical therapy in 2003. She has a specialty certification in Neurology through the American Board of Physical Therapy. She spent nine years working as a staff physical therapist at the Emory Center for Rehabilitation Medicine, primarily in the inpatient neurology unit. 

Her research focus has been in the rehabilitation of the neurologic patient, primarily the use of constraint induced therapy for upper extremity recovery in stroke survivors. Current investigational interests are expanding in areas of stroke survivor and family quality of life, including depression, fatigue, caregiver/family functioning and post-stroke education. The long-term goals of her research efforts are: 1) to develop methods to combine stroke survivor therapies and caregiver education to support a family focused approach to neurorehabilitation; 2) develop awareness of mental health issues in clinical practice.

I am Senior Lecturer in the School of English at the University of Kent, UK. My research interests lie in illness narratives, disability studies and multiethnic American literature. I have recently completed a new monograph titled Illness as Many Narratives (Edinburgh University Press, 2016) that explores the aesthetic, ethical and cultural importance of contemporary representations of illness across different arts and media. Through case studies on photography, artists’ books, performance art, film, theatre, animation and online narratives, it demonstrates how bringing in diverse materials and engaging with multiple perspectives can help the arts, cultural studies and the medical humanities to establish critical conversations and amplify the goals and scope of their respective work.  I am also the Director of Kent's MA in Medical Humanities.  For more details, see my staff profile at Kent,

Ana Bomilcar is an Assistant Professor in the Occupational Therapy Department of Federal University of Parana. She has over 10 years of experience, including healthcare and educational settings. Her clinical and teaching practice has led her to focus on the development of strategies to improve a critical thinking towards the occupational therapy process. She was a tutor of a National Educational Program for Primary Care services and coordinated the latest curriculum review process of the Occupational Therapy Program at Federal University of Parana. Her research interests include health humanities, human rights and disability perspectives of the body. Ana has a keen interest in qualitative research practices and in sociology of everyday life .

Dr Chelsea Bond is a Munanjali and South Sea Islander Australian and a Senior Researcher within the UQ Poche Centre for Indigenous health. 

Dr Bond has worked as an Aboriginal Health Worker and researcher in communities across South East Queensland and has a strong interest in Indigenous health and Indigenous studies.  

Much of Chelsea’s work, across both areas of teaching and research, has focused on interpreting and privileging Indigenous knowledges in relation to health, race, culture and identity. Her PhD research, which examined the disjuncture between Indigenous and public health narratives of identity in an urban Aboriginal community, was awarded a Dean’s Commendation for Academic Excellence placing her among the top 10 per cent of her graduating year.

Her published works have included examinations of strength-based health promotion practice, Indigenous social capital, and the conceptualization of Aboriginality within public health and she received national recognition for her work exploring urban Indigenous smoking cessation narratives. Chelsea was recently awarded an ARC DECRA which seeks to advance a race critical public health resaerch agenda in addressing Indigenous health disparities. 

Chelsea is an Australian Learning and Teaching Fellow and has been awarded National NAIDOC Scholar of the Year, UQ Young Alumni and Lowitja Institute’s Emerging Indigenous Health Researcher. 

Dr Bond is a board member of Screen Queensland and Inala Wangarra (an Indigenous community development association) and is an affiliate member of the UQ Poche Centre for Indigenous Health. She is also a co-host of Wild Black Women on 98.9FM and regular contributor to The Conversation and IndigenousX blog.  

Corie Chuza G. Boongaling is a regular faculty member of Lyceum of the Philippines University-Manila, where she currently teaches General Education subjects, including Art Appreciation. She received her Bachelor of Science in Physical Therapy degree and Master of Public Health degree from the University of the Philippines Manila. She completed different online courses and participated in workshops on art education and music from various institutions, including the University of the Philippines Film Institute, Duke University, King's College London, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Michigan State University, Yale University, and University of Cape Town. Prior to her current stint, she was a faculty member of College of Allied Medical Professions in University of the Philippines Manila, where she spent almost five years working in community-based rehabilitation. She was also a faculty member of School of Physical, Occupational, and Respiratory Therapy of Emilio Aguinaldo College-Manila. She worked as a technical assistant conducting implementation research on community health under the Health Policy Development Program of Gerry Roxas Foundation and UPecon Foundation Inc. Aside from these, she is a member of a church choir in Manila, and occasionally plays her ukulele when she has free time. She currently resides in Manila, Philippines with her younger brother and sister. You may contact her at c.boongaling@gmail.com or corie.boongaling@lpu.edu.ph.