International Health Humanities Network Membership

Marina Tsaplina is a U.S. based performing artist, patient advocate and Founder, CEO and Creative Director of THE BETES Organization whose mission is to employ the performing arts to help people with chronic conditions form a flourishing relationship with their health.

A Scholar in the Medical Humanities at the Penn State College of Medicine - Kienle Center for Humanistic Medicine, her work is dedicated to bringing artistic intervention into health care in order to achieve a more inclusive culture that elevates the patient and artist voice. Through BETES growing programming, she brings the unique power of arts-based research to chronic illness care to serve patients young and old, caregivers, and to strengthen the clinician-patient relationship.

She has lived with Type 1 diabetes since she was two years old.

She studied puppetry in Germany, France, and the U.S. and has always been driven to investigate interdisciplinary applications of the arts in order to deliver transformative social impact.

“Artists hold a key value proposition for our current health care system. Amidst automation and advanced technological innovation, there is still a deep need to nurture the human spirit of the person who lives within a body that is in some way not well. This is the space for artistic practice to thrive and serve the entire ecosystem of care.”