Dartmouth Healthcare Foundations

Interdisciplinary Approaches in Healthcare: A new vision for undergraduate pre-health education

Monday, September 24, 2018

Elizabeth Carpenter-Song and Manish K. Mishra led the introductory Eichler ’57 Seminar. We encouraged undergraduate students interested in health practice, research, and policy to attend. Participants were asked to watch you watch a Dartmouth Medical School Class Day speech given by Dr. Donald Berwick.

Comic Strips and ER Trips: at the intersection of art and medicine

Monday, October 29, 2018

Prof. Elizabeth Carpenter-Song and Dr. Manish K. Mishra explored how comic art mirrors medicine and reflected on enjoying the meaning in daily work with Dr. Babineau and Ricardo Siri.

Orienting to Medicine: An ethnography of Dartmouth’s medical school

Monday, November 12, 2018

Sienna Craig discussed her ethnographic research on the culture of biomedicine and the hidden curriculum in medical school, referencing her ethnography of Geisel Medical School (formerly Dartmouth Medical School).

Necessary Injuries: Reflections on Sacrifice from a Former New England Patriot and an Orthopedic Surgeon

Monday, January 28, 2019

Our guest speakers explored the joys and hidden disciplines required to achieve across the worlds of sports and medicine. Cultures of performance entail deep sacrifice, but also rich possibilities for human connection and learning. Participants learned strategies and resources for resilience and joy in the context of sacrifice.

Re-Engineering Breast Cancer Surgery: the story of how a DHMC Cancer Surgeon partnered with two Thayer School Engineers to model the future of breast cancer surgery

Monday, April 8, 2019

 

At this month's seminar, we explored the amazing story of how three Dartmouth scientists from different fields came together to innovate breast-conserving surgery. Dr. Richard Barth, the Chief of Surgery at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and Thayer engineer Venkat Krishnaswamy presented their ongoing research using 3-D printers, GPS technology, and digital imaging to make breast surgery safer for women with cancer.

Contemplative Studies: New Life for Old Wisdom

Monday, September 19, 2019

 

The Department of Anthropology at Dartmouth and Dartmouth Healthcare Foundations cohosted a seminar as part of a larger Contemplative Studies conference at Dartmouth College. This seminar brought together experts from Brown University and its Warren Alpert School of Medicine with colleagues from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College and the greater Upper Valley community to discuss and practice contemplative studies, with a focus on why contemplative studies are needed, what contemplative curricula might look like at different ages and stages of education, and how contemplative study and practice relates to medical education and practice.

Harnessing “Good" Stress and Minimizing “Bad" Stress to Promote Health and Well-Being

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

 

Dr. Dhabhar was the first to discover mechanisms by which short-term stress physiology enhances the body's immune defenses to increase protection during a fight-or-flight response. He discussed his work in developing practical and sustainable interventions to minimize the effects of “bad” stress and maximize the effects of “good” stress. His interests extend from stress-related molecular and cellular mechanisms, to their holistic physiological function in individuals, to practical and sustainable implications for public policy and societal well-being.

Imprecision Medicine: Health without History

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

This talk with Dr. Rick W.A. Smith, PhD, focused on his work at the intersection of genomics and anthropology to gain insight into the impacts of colonialism on the human genome. 

The Art of Narrative: Communicating in the ER

Thursday, January 26, 2020

Emergency medicine and comic art may seem worlds apart, but they share a common foundation: the ability to read a situation quickly, distill it to its essence, and communicate it clearly. Our guest speakers have mastered this skill in their own fields and showed how a strong grasp of narrative sharpens both clinical thinking and human connection.

In conversation with our featured guests, this session surfaced practical strategies for bringing narrative thinking into high-stakes, fast-moving environments.

Re-Engineering Breast Cancer Surgery: The story of how a Cancer Surgeon partnered with two Thayer School Engineers to model the future of breast cancer surgery

February 20, 2020

Prof. Elizabeth Carpenter-Song and Dr. Manish K. Mishra explored the amazing story of how three Dartmouth scientists from different fields came together to innovate breast-conserving surgery. Prof. Venkat Krishnaswamy and Dr. Richard Barth presented ongoing research using 3-D printers, GPS technology, and digital imaging to make breast surgery safer for women with cancer.

Little did we know at the time, but this would be our last hybrid seminar for quite a while as the world was overcome by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Be the Echo: A Call for Art and Advocacy in Healthcare

Thursday, October 29, 2020

As we resurfaced amid the COVID-19 pandemic, our first fully remote seminar with guest speaker Christine Montross, MD, MFA, also kicked off the 2020-21 Eichler Seminar Season. The conversation leaned on her latest novel, Waiting for an Echo, and explored the intersection between mental health and the American prison system. This isolation of imprisonment and the isolation we all felt in our personal lives at the time made this a particularly timely message.

Smart Phones, Smarter Medicine: Patients recording their doctor’s appointments

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

Dr. Manish K. Mishra joined the conversation with an expert panel as we explored the ethics and value of patient recording as an innovation in patient-centered health technology.

Kinship and Care: Migration, Social Change, and Attunement to Stories from Birth to Death

Prof. Carpenter-Song and Dr. Mishra joined in a discussion of Sienna Craig's new book, The Ends of Kinship: Connecting Himalayan Lives Between Nepal and New York. The conversation with Prof. Craig, answered many questions: How do experiences of migration – from remote villages in the Himalaya to the global village that is New York City – shape the ways that families and communities care for each other, including in COVID times? How do people abide by each other across geographies and generations, even as culture changes and values shift Himalayan lives between Nepal and New York?

New Delhi to New Hampshire: Understanding Policies in Response to COVID that Lead to Health Inequities in Transgender Care

Tuesday, February 23, 2021

 

Health policy responses to the COVID pandemic have led to discriminatory practices for many vulnerable groups. Nations have used different models to manage lockdowns and the distribution of health resources. A Palliative Care team in India, specializing in alleviating health-related suffering, explored what has taken place in India over the past year. Physicians from the Dept of Pediatrics at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center discussed analogous problems in the US and helped us expand our understanding of advocacy in this difficult moment.

Learning Choice Making and Judgement in Medical Care: Designing Systems to Help Practitioners Gain the Wisdom They Need

Tuesday, March 30, 2021

The tough choices involved in daily medical practice demand more than scientific knowledge and technical skills.  They involve learning the skills and character traits needed to help patients and their families make difficult decisions.  They involve learning how to work well with colleagues on the daily choices made by interdisciplinary teams.  Practitioners need the will and capacity to do good listening and good talking, to empathize, to counsel, to deal with uncertainty, to balance empathy with detachment, to be resilient, to be imaginative, to be reflective, and to deliberate. So how do you design medical institutions and medical education to develop wise practitioners capable of making the myriad of difficult choices that everyday care and teamwork demand?  One example discussed in Ken’s book Practical Wisdom the redesign of the third-year clerkship program for Harvard Medical students at the Cambridge Health Alliance (pp. 255-268).  In his talk , Ken presented three other cases: one about an ICU nursing unit, one about an inner-city health clinic, and one about a program in a major medical center nearby that provides palliative care.  These success stories will help us reflect on what can actually be done to design learning environments for practical wisdom in healthcare.

Music AND Medicine -Music IN Medicine - Music IS Medicine

Tuesday, April 27, 2021

The final Eichler Seminar of the 2020-21 academic year featured Professor Michael Casey exploring music's role in medicine. Using Mozart's Sonata K. 448, the seminar demonstrated music's measurable effects on brain activity and epilepsy. Casey also showed how speech melody reveals emotional meaning, underscoring the humanities' critical, not merely complementary, role in transforming healthcare.

Freud’s Couch vs My Couch: Is digital therapy the answer in the era of COVID?

Tuesday, September 28, 2021

Experts explored digital mental health tools as a solution to growing access gaps worsened by COVID-19. Dr. Audrey Kern highlighted FDA-authorized Prescription Digital Therapeutics as evidence-based supplements to traditional care. Panelists also raised concerns about data privacy, equity, and the challenge of navigating thousands of unregulated wellness apps.

Housing is Health: Intersections of Policy and Public Health

October 26, 2021

This Eichler seminar explored how Vermont used housing policy as a public health tool during COVID-19. Experts in public health and law highlighted Vermont's success in temporarily ending homelessness through eviction moratoriums and motel placements, while stressing that permanent housing solutions require interdisciplinary collaboration, policy reform, and active advocacy from medical professionals.

Unresolved Tensions: Climate Change and Climate Anxiety Death

Tuesday, December 14, 2021

The Dartmouth Healthcare Foundations community discussed the intersection of climate change, mental health, and healthcare. Speakers addressed the urgency of climate crisis, the need for climate-aware therapy, and the connection between human and planetary health. They emphasized the importance of taking individual and collective action to combat climate change for a better, greener future.

Re-Engineering Breast Cancer Surgery

January, 25, 2021

This Eric Eichler D’57 Foundations in Medicine and Humanities Seminar showcased an inspiring collaboration between a cancer surgeon and an engineering expert, leading to the development of the revolutionary Breast Cancer Locator (BCL). The BCL, designed to improve breast cancer surgery precision, has shown promising outcomes, highlighting the power of multidisciplinary collaboration in medical innovation.

Poetry, Music, and the Practice of Medicine: How Close Attention to Goethe and Schubert Can Improve Clinical Care

March 1, 2022.

This month's Eichler Seminar led by Dartmouth music professor Steve Swayne explored how close attention to Goethe's poem "Erlkönig" and its musical settings can sharpen clinical listening skills. By analyzing tone, inflection, and musical meaning, medical students learned to hear what patients mean beyond the words they say.

Outbreak: Epidemics in a connected world

Tuesday, May 3, 2022

As we entered the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, we sought to learn from previous epidemics to identify the biological, environmental, and social conditions that combined to create a new global pandemic. Dr. Daniel Lucey, MD, MPH, has spent his career tracing outbreaks and emergent epidemics globally as an infectious disease physician and public health practitioner. To communicate key lessons from his experience addressing disease threats, Dr. Lucey has collaborated with the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History on an exhibit focused on epidemics. Participants explored successful strategies from past epidemics and gained insights into actions we might employ to end the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Future of Hospital Sounds

Thursday, September 29, 2022

In this first Eichler Seminar of the new academic year, Yoko Sen, Founder and Sound Alchemist of Sen Sound, told the story of how her own experience in hospitals and hearing the needs of other patients led her to her work in creating better sound atmospheres for hospitals.

Caring for the Caregiver

October 26, 2022

Globally, Healthcare Workers have significant levels of self-reported anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and increased substance abuse disorders. In this session, we focus on mental health from a healthcare leadership stance. How do leaders in healthcare raise awareness of these issues, eliminate barriers to accessing care, identify supports for health workers, reduce stigma, and improve tools to address the health worker mental health conditions?

Partners in Health: Amplifying Hope in Global Health Equity

November 9, 2022

Starting in 1987, Drs. Paul Farmer and Jim Y. Kim inspired a global health revolution with their nonprofit organization, Partners in Health. The legacy of that work is continued by Dr. Agnes Binagwaho, who honors the vision of holistically addressing disease, poverty, healthcare inequity, and human rights. These principles face new challenges in the context of the global pandemic and healthcare professional burnout. After leaving her post as the Minister of Health of Rwanda in 2016, Dr. Binagwaho was appointed as the Vice Chancellor of the University of Global Health Equity, an initiative of Partners in Health that aims to teach a new perspective on healthcare delivery.

Hidden in Plain Sight: Alcohol Addiction, Mental Illness, and Missed Diagnoses 

Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Former NH Supreme Court Chief Justice John T. Broderick, Jr. is on a mission to change our mental health system. By sharing his family’s hard-won knowledge about mental illness, he hopes to leverage their feelings of shame, guilt, stigma, and isolation to heighten awareness of how addiction can mask mental illness. 

Imaging and Re-imagining Mental Health: How visualizing the brain in mental illness through functional MRI can reduce suffering  

Wednesday, March 8, 2023

Mental illness affects about 25% of the US adult population, resulting in immeasurable suffering. New technologies using functional neuroimaging may help focus treatment and prevention strategies in psychiatric care. Dr. Silbersweig's team at Harvard's Center for Neurosciences is on the cutting edge of understanding mental functions in the brain. Their work is revealing critical insights and helping to better define aspects of mental health.

Sometimes You Need a Doctor Who Can Read Poetry

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

We need clinicians who expertly understand medical science. But that is not enough to holistically care for another person. The practice of medicine requires other forms of knowledge. Learning to closely read poetry or other forms of literature can develop a particular set of skills that are critical to helping patients and other team members navigate situations of uncertainty and moral ambiguity. Dr. Kathy Kirkland has worked with her multidisciplinary palliative care team to develop their reading skills and will share an exercise that illustrates how the practice of close reading is essential to the work of healing.

 

Bring Your Whole Self: Practicing Medicine as a Patient and Poet

Wednesday, September 27, 2023 

 

Before Celeste Lipkes became a psychiatrist she was a patient and a writer. In this session we will use biographical poems from Lipkes' recent book Radium Girl to consider how our identities can both catalyze and complicate our journey through medical training. How do we bring our whole selves to our practice of medicine, particularly when institutions may see our identities and passions as contrary or even threatening to the prototypical physician? 

 

Practicing with Humanity During a Mass Casualty Event: A physician reflects on the Boston Marathon bombing

Wednesday, November 1, 2023

Dr. Ken Marshall shared his firsthand account of the Boston Marathon bombing with the Eichler Community, reflecting on the challenges and responsibilities of emergency medicine. His experience highlighted the importance of humanity in healthcare, resilience in crisis, and the ongoing impact such events have on both practitioners and those they serve.

Meet your Digital Twin: Can Artificial Intelligence actually improve your health?

December 6, 2023

After three years of health challenges, Lorena Puica left investment banking and leveraged her skill sets from the business sector to create a digital healthcare platform that prevents disease. With expertise in AI, she mobilizes individual character traits to create a personalized 'Digital Twin' for smartphone users. The Digital Twin returns healthcare agency to users and its implications extend far beyond that promise.

Follow the Money: Hidden costs in profit-driven healthcare

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

At the end of the day, someone has to pay for it. Bringing a medication to market is a multi-step process. A gross simplification would include the following steps: a drug needs to be created, trialed, studied, approved, priced, added to a list that is covered by insurance, manufactured to scale, distributed, prescribed, and then purchased by a patient. In this seminar, we “followed the money” to gain a deeper understanding of where the bulk of the expenses in this process are incurred, which results in the aggregate cost of care.

The Medical Writing Coach: Our responsibility to communicate clearly in healthcare

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Stakes have never been higher for communicating healthcare information. As we witnessed during the pandemic, the way information is presented can change the illness trajectory of a person, a family, or a population. We live in a time of unprecedented access to knowledge and an overwhelming amount of information across platforms that are often challenging to navigate. Dr. Steven Woloshin has done public health research in improving the quality of communication for professional media. He trains journalists and press officers who are tasked with the complex work of writing public-facing messages. As a healthcare community, we need methods to help people become better consumers of health information.