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IMH Happenings

10/11/2006
These excerpts from the Fall 2006 GSBS Quarterly Alumni Newsletter

Marissa Gostanian, M.A., (ག Medical Humanities) received the National Student Research Forum (NSRF) Medical Humani¬ties Award. Marissa's presentation was titled "Physician Heal Thyself: Desire and Impairment in Abraham Verghese's The Tennis Partner." The primary purpose of the NSRF, now in its forty-seventh year, is to provide a national scientific assembly, planned and managed by students for presentation of research by medical students, interns and residents, and graduate students in the health sciences. The NSRF originated in 1960 at UTMB, and the first Forum had participants from Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Ten¬nessee. This year approximately 100 students from 38 medical schools, graduate schools, and hospitals throughout the United States, Canada, and India presented their work.

Laura Kicklighter, Ph.D., (༾ Medical Humanities) was selected as one of Stetson University's Outstanding Young Alumni Awardees for 2006. The award recognizes alumni of Stetson who are 35 years of age or younger and have demonstrated significant accomplishment or promise in their fields; leadership; or civic, cultural, or charitable involvement. Stetson University was founded in 1883 and was the first private university in Florida. Laura is currently an assistant pro¬fessor in Philosophy and Religious Studies at Lynchburg College, Lynchburg, VA.

Also in their fall 2006 quarterly alumni newsletter, the GSBS asked a few alumni to give a brief synopsis of their career path and to answer the following questions: What degree(s) did you get from UTMB? How has a degree from UTMB helped in your current position? If you had it all to do over, what would you change? Any advice for current students? This issue we focused on non-traditional career paths and in the future intend to interview alumni with more traditional paths.

Among those chosen to be featured is Deborah Cummins, who graduated with a Ph.D. in Medical Humanities in 1998. She writes:

It's been an interesting journey. My undergraduate and master's degrees were in Sociology from Texas A&M, College Station. I'm originally from Shreveport, Louisiana and attended LSU for 2 ½ years-then I married a Texan. We were living in Brenham, Texas and raising three children. I returned to college to complete my undergraduate degree when the youngest entered kindergarten. College Station was 40 miles away and I commuted from Brenham. I then continued in the Ph.D. soci¬ology program and my areas of interest were medical sociology and social psychology. I took a course in medical ethics as an elective where I heard about the Medical Humanities program at UTMB. I told my advisor at A&M that it sounded like the perfect program and she encouraged me to check it out. I ap¬plied to the program, talked with IMH faculty, and made the decision to move our family to the Galveston area so I could begin.

The day of my dissertation defense at UTMB the American Medical Association faxed me a job offer to be associate director in the new Institute for Ethics at the AMA Headquarters in Chicago. I had interviewed with them and they seemed interested in the combination of skills that I brought to the table-that is, knowledge of research (from my sociology background) and training in ethics and humanities. I worked for the AMA for five years and did research on pro¬fessional ethics and health care policy, published articles, and served as director of the ethical force program with goals to identify ethical expectations for health care and develop ways to measure these expectations. Also, at the AMA, I was part of teams working on issues including organ donation, health literacy, and end of life care.

While a graduate student at UTMB, I had the opportu¬nity to network at national conferences and with the many visitors who came to the IMH program. Consequently, after moving to Chicago this networking led to participation in the monthly meetings of the Chicago Narrative and Medicine Reading Group, serving on hospital ethics committees, guest lecturing, and an adjunct faculty appointment at the University of Illinois College of Medicine.

My research in both managed care and patient safety led me to learn more about evidence-based methods and practice. Personal experiences with family members convinced me of the importance of nutrition and dietetics as an important part of health care. These interests have merged in my present position as director of research at the American Dietetics Association in Chicago. For the past two years I have focused on the development of evidence based practice guidelines. I have trained hundreds of practitioners in ADA's evidence analysis process and methodology and managed the development of the online evidence analysis library.”
(www. adaevidencelibrary.com).

I am currently working with the USDA to utilize ADA's evidence based practices in the development of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines.

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