Medical Humanities and Arts Program About Us Curriculum Required Curriculum Elective Curriculum Research & Creative Projects Abolition Medicine and Disability Justice Plexus Journals Funding Opportunities & Awards Publications Support and Partners Research and Creative Projects in Medical Humanities and Arts Home Education Department Programs Medical Humanities and Arts Program Medical Humanities and Arts Program > MHAP Research and Creative Projects Student-Led Projects Students have the opportunity to participate in the following student-led projects. Plexus MHAP sponsors Plexus, the UCI School of Medicine's journal of arts and humanities, which provides students, residents, faculty and staff with an outlet for creative, original work. Collections range from poetry, short essays, photography, drawings and much more. Beyond the Walls of UCI The Plexus journal explores themes of compassion, empathy, cultural humility and so much more that it impacts beyond the UCI School of Medicine community. Celina Yang (MD/PhD candidate) and Dr. Juliet McMullin presented at the American Society for Bioethics conference an in-depth analysis of recent Plexus issues for compassion in medicine. The collective effort of Plexus contributors continues to be a source of knowledge and insight into how medical humanities strengthen medical education. Explore the Journals Plexus 2024 – The 25th Anniversary Edition The next issue for the 2023-2024 academic year features a new theme called Navigate and is currently open for submissions. Share your journey View our submission guidelines and submit your story by Jan. 21, 2024. Ad Anima New this year! Ad Anima is a literary medical journal, creative non-fiction pieces from healthcare workers and trainees across the country. Ad Anima aims to create a conscientious, inclusive and collaborative community for sharing healing and learning narratives from physicians, nurses, pharmacists, physical therapists and their student counterparts. Contribute to the inaugural issue of Ad Anima! Ad Anima Submissions Medical Student Art Exhibit The Medical Student Art Exhibit is an annual contest that amplifies the creative minds of UCI School of Medicine’s student community. Students submit their creative works to a panel of their peers and three winners are selected. The works can be seen on display in the Medical Education building for the following academic year, as well as during the spring symposium for the Medical Humanities and Arts Program. Project Hx Project Hx is MHAP’s student-led, three-edition project; it is a collection of narratives and photographs with the goal of highlighting the rich diversity of the medical community. It is a portraiture of people’s stories and backgrounds, their experiences and adventures in healthcare and ultimately a way to show a human side behind the oftentimes faceless nature of medicine. The people interviewed portray a fraction of the unique attitudes and ideologies that represent UCI’s medical community. We hope that it can serve as kindling for continued conversation. 2018 2019 2020 Undergraduate Medical Humanities Organizations Healing through Humanities This UCI undergraduate club is a student-led organization devoted to embodying empathy and compassion in health care. Students have the opportunity to engage in discussion about medical humanities with peers, attend medical school classes such as the “Art of Doctoring” elective, contribute to ongoing projects and even submit to The Scribe undergraduate journal. Discover More Students for Health Humanities Established by UCI alumni Alexis Nguyen and Faith Chadwick in 2022, Students for Health Humanities is an international association that aims to implement the health humanities into community service, public policy and healthcare programs. Their mission is to foster compassion in the health field through interactive projects, volunteerism and advocacy. Explore the community Research and Creative Projects Explore additional opportunities in medical humanities and art through other research projects below. COVID-19 Oral Histories Project In collaboration with the National Humanities Center and the Library of Congress, UC Irvine School of Medicine’s Medical Humanities and Arts Program is participating in a nationwide oral history project centering the stories of frontline workers during the pandemic. UCI Undergraduate and Medical Student interviewees are trained in oral history methodology, ethical interviewing, and deep listening to prepare for interviewing frontline workers who want to share their story. These may include physicians, nurses, caretakers, EMTs, firefighters, scribes, security guards and many more fields. Sana Shah, MS1 "I am really excited to get involved with MHAP more at UCI. I have already been involved with the COVID Oral History Project, and I am a new member of the Plexus journal. I am eager to see how it influences the scope of communication in medicine. The biggest role that I am observing in Medical Humanities is in altering how we talk to our patients, communicate with our colleagues, learn and digest information in new ways and communicate nuanced experiences of people with various backgrounds and health outcomes in a way that inspires change." Independent Research Projects MHAP provides medical students the chance to pursue independent research opportunities in medical humanities and arts with the guidance of faculty mentors. Summer Research Stipend Thanks to funding from the Medical Humanities and Arts Endowment, MHAP offers two competitive research stipends in the amount of $2000 to support scholarly activity for an 8-week period over the summer. If you are interested in applying for an independent research project, please keep an eye out for the call for submissions in January. Below are examples of independent research projects by medical students. Kathryn Uchida, MS3 Japanese Incarceration "Medical Humanities at UCI has been very helpful for me; I was able to explore personal passions and combine them with my medical interests. One project I am working on focuses on the health disparities and intergenerational effects of Japanese internments during WWII. I am very grateful that some of the faculty have been willing to work on this with me and combine art, writing and comic book literature to examine the lens of the people living there at the time, as well as personal anecdotes from my family. This work is very important to me, and I am eager to share this with the Medical Humanities community in general. One can never overemphasize the value of connection with patients; it is an art to diagnose and treat, to look at patients’ emotions that might be coloring their treatment. At the root of this field is to explore the patient-physician connection." Mark Chih-Wei Liang, MPhil Mental Health in the Hong Kong Disaporic Community This project aims to investigate the causes, perspectives and consequences that resettlement causes to mental health and PTSD in the Hong Kong diasporic community. It utilizes methods in oral histories to explore themes of political influence on the presentation of PTSD, regional differences/similarities to the immigration experience, and de-centering/de-damaging the narrative of the Hong Kong diaspora. Abolition Medicine and Disability Justice The “Abolition Medicine and Disability Justice: Mapping Health Inequality and Renewing the Social” is a UCOP Multicampus award that uses health humanities methodologies and theories to examine the multiple pathways that contribute to health inequities. Research from the project can contribute to dismantling systemic racism and reimagining education and delivery of health care within and outside of the clinic. This project is in collaboration with UC Los Angeles, UC Santa Cruz, UC Riverside and UC San Francisco. Explore the Project Indigenous Art, Placemaking, and Wellbeing: Building Relational Health Practices The APW project is designed to increase our understanding of the connections between place and wellness. Through a series of artistic workshops, Indigenous/Native American and Pacific Islander peoples reflect on place(s), meanings and encounters with health and wellbeing. This project is funded by UCI Medical Humanities and Arts Program, UC Riverside’s NIH Center for Health Disparities Research, and is in collaboration with Riverside San Bernardino County Indian Health, Inc. And the Chihuum Piiuywmk Inach/Gathering of Good Minds Project. Medical humanities presents the opportunity to counterbalance the medical profession, preoccupied with its measurements, populations and algorithms, with an unyielding interrogation of what it means to be a person. The general makes way for the particular, the sterile makes way for the fecund and the ends make way for the beginnings. Conscientious exploration of humanity and concepts at work in healthcare spaces is central to understanding, and thus enacting, medicine. -Rajeev Dutta, GR1, MSTP (MD-PhD Program)