Current Medical Humanities Research Projects

Literary Disparities: A Discussion Based Podcast on Underrepresented Women’s Reproductive Health Issues in Literature, Art, and Culture

Faculty Mentor: Cameron Dezen Hammon, MFA
Fall 2025-Fall 2026

Project Description
Literary Disparities will look at the cultural invisibility of women’s reproductive health struggles in everything from PCOS and endometriosis to perimenopause and menopause and asks if creative writing / literary production can make the invisible visible. The podcast will be both interview and conversation based and will feature conversations with reproductive justice advocates, medical professionals, authors, artists, and poets at Rice, as well as nationwide.

Project Report (Submitted by Muna Nnamani)
“Literary Disparities”, a podcast created by Rice University Medical Humanities lecturer Cameron Dezen Hammon, discusses how representation in the media (TV, novels, entertainment, and other platforms) impacts women’s health in practice. By interviewing a blend of researchers, writers, medical professionals, and artists, Professor Hammon investigates contemporary methods of portraying gynecology in entertainment and creative spaces and creates space for discussion of the broader effects on the quality of healthcare that women receive.

As a Medical Humanities Research Institute fellow, I was assigned to Professor Hammon’s project at the beginning of the 2025-2026 academic year with the responsibility of helping her plan and launch the podcast. I worked closely with Professor Hammon to create marketing materials and create a social media presence, determine potential interviewees from a brainstormed list of female health topics to cover during interviews, and write research packets prior to each conversation. The process was very educational about the various medical conditions that women struggle with in silence, out of embarrassment or the society-imposed pressure to be “strong”. With every interview and private conversation, we chased the question, “How can we work to make the invisible visible?”

We worked together not just to ensure thoughtful, well-informed conversations on the mic, but also to learn audio engineering by using the Digital Media Commons resources in Fondren Library. We were able to mix our own episodes and launch “Literary Disparities” on multiple platforms.

My experience with the Medical Humanities Research Institute was invaluable, thoroughly acquainting me with gynecology through a creative lens. I not only learned new methods of writing about health, which was important to me as an English major, but also gained more medical knowledge about female anatomy. Professor Hammon is a fantastic mentor and became one of the most influential figures during my time at Rice.

Age, Disability, and Human-Centered Dressing Assistance

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Vanessa Sanchez
Fall 2025-Fall 2026

Project Description
Wearable robotic garments that change shape or deliver assistive forces to the body—while remaining lightweight, comfortable, and resembling everyday clothing—offer a promising pathway to support individuals who may not have access to full-time caregivers. These systems, which can integrate soft actuation delivered in textile embodiments, have the potential to assist with essential activities of daily living (ADLs), such as dressing. However, despite increasing technological capabilities in textile-based wearable robots, there is limited understanding of how success in dressing assistance is defined considering the needs of various populations. Cultural, generational, and disability-specific perspectives all shape what is considered meaningful support—whether that is speed, independence, comfort, or personal expression. Without clearly defined metrics rooted in lived experience, it becomes difficult to evaluate or improve wearable systems in ways that genuinely serve users. This student project will investigate how different communities define successful dressing assistance, and will propose a set of human-centered design goals and evaluation frameworks that center user values to accelerate the development and adoption of wearable robotics for accessible care.

Project Report (Submitted by Suhani Koppolu)
During the 2025–2026 school year, I had the opportunity to work on the Age, Disability, and Human-Centered Dressing Assistance project through the Medical Humanities Research Institute (MHRI). The project focuses on understanding how success in dressing assistance is defined across different populations, specifically examining age- and disability-specific differences. Through this work, I have explored the “granularity gap,” which describes the disconnect between how engineers and researchers measure the technical performance of assistive technologies and how successful those technologies are for individuals using them in everyday life. Many assistive technologies are considered technically successful from an engineering perspective but still fail to meet the practical and personal needs of users. My project involves reviewing papers on soft robotic dressing assistance devices and the human perspectives surrounding these devices, then synthesizing the findings into a literature review.

Through my literature review, I have been working toward developing human-centered design and evaluation frameworks that can help guide the future development of dressing assistance technologies. One of the most meaningful parts of this project has been approaching design through a humanities perspective. Rather than focusing only on functionality, I have learned more about the lived experiences of people with disabilities and the ways assistive technologies can impact independence, dignity, and self-expression.

I have also had the opportunity to learn about the rise of soft wearable robotics and the potential these technologies have to create more adaptive and accessible dressing assistance devices. The MHRI fellowship has allowed me to strengthen my research and literature review skills while also showing me how interdisciplinary perspectives can contribute to healthcare innovation. This experience has been incredibly meaningful, and I am excited to continue this work through Fall 2026.

The Aesthetics of Reproduction

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Carly Thomsen
Fall 2025-Fall 2026

Project Description
This project considers how centering aesthetics might shift our understandings of and approaches to reproductive justice. While scholars have talked at length about reproductive health, rights, and justice in terms of ethics, politics, religion, public health, media, and history, very little work on reproduction focuses specifically on aesthetics. I am interested in how a focus on aesthetics can help us develop new epistemological and political possibilities for contemporary conversations about reproductive justice. Questions this work takes up include: How might focusing on aesthetics (rather than, say, narrative content) expand prior feminist and queer analyses of cultural texts about reproductive health and medicine? What can happen to our art, knowledge, and advocacy when creating cultural texts becomes our way of doing something politically? What are the benefits and limits of thinking about resistance in terms of aesthetics? This project is inspired by a question that renowned feminist artist Carmen Winant asks in Notes on Fundamental Joy: Does hope have an aesthetic? (Winant, 2019).

Students will contribute to the project in various ways: reviewing literature helpful for thinking about reproductive health, rights, and justice through the lens of aesthetics; building an electronic archive of cultural texts that focus on reproductive health and medicine so that we can examine them in terms of aesthetics, ultimately developing a typology of reproductive justice aesthetics; and creating original pieces of media that synthesize our findings and can circulate via social media. This project is deeply informed by and intends to contribute to the medical humanities through focusing on cultural representations of reproductive health, medicine, rights, and justice.

Project Report (Submitted by Lajward Zahra)
As a Medical Humanities Fellow in 2025-2026, Lajward Zahra worked with Dr. Carly Thomsen on projects at the intersection of reproductive justice, feminist pedagogy, media analysis, and public-facing humanities work. Her fellowship year including generating material for scholarly as well as public audiences.

Zahra provided research support for five different research articles: two focused on crisis pregnancy center training manuals, medical misinformation, and data privacy; two focused on reproductive justice pedagogy, including the use of collages and analog game making; one on trad wife influencers and their circulation of medical misinformation about birth control. She is also contributing as a named co-author to a book chapter on crisis pregnancy centers, reproductive governance, and feminist collaboration.

Zahra presented this research in two settings: the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present conference and Rice’s Humanities and Arts Day.

Public-facing feminist work was also central to Zahra’s fellowship, both as a way of sharing the research team’s work and as a method for generating new feminist ideas. She helped facilitate a reproductive justice game night and led the design, organization, and facilitation of a pilot Public Feminism Lab. More than 45 students attended each event, through which participants were invited to respond to our research findings through making collages, memes, and TikToks. We are using the insights gained through our pilot Lab as we develop a series of Public Feminism Labs, supported by the Humanities Research Center, for the 2026-27 academic year.

Conflict in Critical Care: Narrative Perspectives and Conflict Mode Analysis

Faculty Mentors: Drs. Natasha Afonso and BA White (Texas Children's Hospital)
Fall 2025-Spring 2026

Project Description
In the high-stakes environment of the intensive care unit (ICU), conflict is a common part of daily practice. Critical care staff regularly navigate emotionally charged interactions with families and colleagues while managing life-or-death decisions under pressure.

This project uses a narrative medicine approach combined with a conflict management mode survey to explore how ICU professionals manage interpersonal conflict. Participants first complete the survey to identify their personal conflict styles, then share stories of real-life tension — focusing on what happened, how they responded, and what helped.

By analyzing these stories through both narrative and conflict style lenses, the project uncovers practical strategies for conflict resolution in critical care settings. It highlights how clinicians adapt, communicate, and collaborate in moments of crisis, offering insight into the emotional and interpersonal skills that support effective care.

Tasks the student would be expected to perform
-Conduct background literature review related to conflict in healthcare environments.
-Develop semi-structured interviews
-Administer survey and conduct in-depth interviews with clinicians to describe conflict situations, what happened and what worked to provide qualitative data and practical insights.
-Transcribe and analyze interviews to identify themes.

Navigating Life in the Hospital with Heart Failure on an Implantable Ventricular Assist Device

Faculty Mentors: Drs. Ashish Ankola, Kriti Puri, Natasha Afonso (Texas Children's Hospital)
Fall 2025-Spring 2026

Project Description
This project explores the experience of living with a Berlin EXCOR Heart Ventricular Assist Device (VAD), focusing on the emotional, psychological and social implications for patients and their families who rely on this life-saving technology. This project will investigate the complexities of adapting to a life with a VAD, examining the intersection of medical technology with the patient and family experience while awaiting heart transplant.
The Berlin EXCOR VAD is used to support the heart and circulation in children with severe heart failure while awaiting heart transplantation in the hospital. It incorporates cannulas implanted by open heart surgery, and the pump located external to the patient, with a mobile controller with a short battery life needing connection to wall power (paracorporeal VAD). These devices provide clinical stability however necessitates the patients stay in the hospital while on support. While these devices can improve survival rates for these patients, they also introduce profound challenges, both physical and emotional. This project will explore these challenges and document the patient and family narratives in adapting to the physical, social and emotional aspects of life with a paracorporeal VAD.

Tasks the student would be expected to perform
-Conduct literature review related to patient and family experience of patients with paracorporeal VAD technology.
-Develop semi-structured interview to explore the experience of patients on paracorporeal VAD support and their family members, emotional responses, and daily challenges.
-Conduct in-depth Interviews with patients on paracorporeal VAD support and their family members to focus on themes such as fear of complications, impact on relationships, and the social and financial impact of living in the hospital while awaiting heart transplant.
-Transcribe and analyze interviews to identify themes.

Sedation, Pain and Delirium in the Pediatric ICU: A Nursing Perspective

Faculty Mentors: Drs. Paul Checchia, Gitanjali Indramohan, Natasha Afonso (Texas Children's Hospital)
Fall 2025-Fall 2026

Project Description
Critically ill children often require intubation and mechanical ventilation due to cardiac, respiratory or multiorgan failure. The invasive nature of ICU care- including the presence of tubes, lines and the high-stress environment can lead to significant pain, fear, and anxiety necessitating the use of continuous sedative, analgesic and anxiolytic infusions. Managing these medications requires a careful balance between achieving comfort and limiting adverse effects such as drug tolerance, withdrawal, and extended ICU stays.

To support this balance, many institutions, including ours, implement standardized sedation and pain management protocols. These include frequent nursing assessments using validated tools to measure pain and sedation such as State Behavioral Scale (SBS) and COMFORT-B scale. Despite the use of validated objective measures to manage sedation/pain, we would like to explore the element of subjectivity related to nursing experience and background on sedation and analgesia practices in the ICU.

Project Report (Submitted by Aarthi Kukaruban)
Mechanically ventilated children in the pediatric intensive care unit often require sedation to minimize pain and ensure patient safety. Decisions regarding sedation, such as how much and how often to administer it, must be made carefully, as both oversedation and undersedation can have harmful clinical consequences. Nurses play a critical role in making these decisions, which is why my project aims to explore their experiences and perspectives surrounding the management of pain, sedation, and delirium in their daily practice. To do so, I interviewed fourteen nurses working in pediatric critical care units at Texas Children’s Hospital, asking questions about the challenges they encounter while managing sedated patients, the influence of family members at the bedside, and their perspectives on formal assessment tools. The interviews were designed in a semi-structured format, allowing nurses to guide the direction of the conversation and share experiences they felt were most important. After completing the interviews, I began conducting a thematic analysis. While the analysis is still ongoing, I have already noticed several interesting themes emerging, such as family presence being both valuable and challenging, as well as conflicting opinions between healthcare providers and families regarding sedation management. Next semester, I plan to interview night-shift nurses to diversify the range of perspectives included in the study and finish the thematic analysis. Through this research, we hope to better understand how clinical guidelines are interpreted and applied in practice so they can be improved in the future.

Parental Mental Health in Families of Children Hospitalized with Congenital Heart Disease

Faculty Mentors: Drs. Chetna Pande and Natasha Afonso (Texas Children's Hospital)
Fall 2025-Fall 2026

Project Description
The parents of children hospitalized with congenital heart disease (CHD) face extraordinary psychological challenges as they navigate prolonged hospitalizations, often during critical surgical interventions. These parents experience a tumultuous journey, marked by fleeting moments of hope and frequent setbacks, which has been described as an “emotional rollercoaster”. With limited access to their usual support systems and separated from their homes and other children, caregivers often face feelings of isolation, anxiety and profound uncertainty. The psychological toll of their child’s hospitalization frequently manifests as heightened stress, fear and deterioration in their overall quality of life.

This group of parents reports significant levels of psychological distress, including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress, which not only affects their well-being but also has been shown to have long term consequences for their child’s neurodevelopmental outcomes. Parental mental health is inextricably linked to the emotional and developmental trajectory of children with CHD, making it critical to understand the impact of these caregiving experiences in greater depth.

This mixed methods study, utilizing semi-structured qualitative interviews, seeks to explore the experiences and struggles of parents during their child’s hospitalization for CHD. Our goal is to uncover the specific emotional, psychological and social challenges they face in order to develop targeted interventions that can better support parents throughout this difficult period. By enhancing parental mental health, we aim to mitigate the adverse effects on child neurodevelopment, improving outcomes for both child and the family as a whole.

Project Report (Submitted by Zach Mok)
Over the past academic year, I have worked with pediatric cardiac intensivists Dr. Chetna Pande and Dr. Natasha Afonso (affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital), as well as Dr. Samin Rashidbeigi, a medical humanities post-doc affiliated with Rice University, on a project titled “Parental Mental Health in Families of Children Hospitalized with Congenital Heart Disease.” This project focuses on the emotional and mental experiences of parents who have stayed long-term in the hospital with their child in the cardiac intensive care unit.

As an MHRI Fellow, this project gave me the opportunity to engage directly in qualitative research by entering patient rooms and speaking with parents about their lived experiences. Through semi-structured interviews, I found it extremely rewarding to be face-to-face with parents who had endured prolonged periods of stress, uncertainty and emotional hardship. In a way, my role felt less like that of an interviewer and more like a compassionate listener—someone present simply to hear their stories, acknowledge their experiences and engage with them in a genuine and empathetic way. The findings from our study will have the potential to help Texas Children’s, and hopefully other hospitals in the nation, strengthen and expand services aimed at supporting parental mental health and alleviating some of the stress families experience during prolonged hospitalizations.

As an aspiring physician, getting to step into these patient rooms has allowed me to see the value of familial connection in coping with stress. People need someone to turn to—to express their frustrations, to vent, to cry to, to laugh with—especially during such a vulnerable time. It is my hope that healthcare providers will advocate for not only the patient, but their families and support systems as well. To do this, we must implement change within hospital services and practice close reading through narrative medicine, a tactic I have learned so much about throughout this process. I am so grateful to have had this opportunity through MHRI and hope to grow more as I continue my work in the fall.

One Heart, Many Stories: Life with a Single Ventricle

Faculty Mentors: Drs. Rocky Tsang, Ashish Ankola, Priya Bhat (Texas Children's Hospital)
Fall 2025-Fall 2026

Project Description
Children and adults living with single ventricle physiology often undergo multiple surgeries, prolonged hospitalizations, and lifelong uncertainty. Their families become caregivers, advocates, and emotional anchors — all while navigating fear, hope, and the pressure of medical decision-making. This project explores the emotional, narrative, and relational experience of living with a single ventricle heart through the voices of those most affected. This project allows us to document the stories behind the statistics and creates space for families to share their voice with the community.

Project Report (Submitted by Bethany Grassi)
The One Heart, Many Stories: Life with a Single Ventricle project is a collaboration between the Medical Humanities Research Institute (MHRI) and Texas Children’s Hospital. The project team includes clinical collaborators Dr. Ashish Ankola, Dr. Rocky Tsang, and Dr. Priya Bhat, who specialize in pediatric cardiology; Dr. Katherine Shwetz, the Rice University Medical Humanities faculty mentor; and Bethany Grassi, a Rice undergraduate student and Medical Humanities Research Institute (MHRI) Fellow. This work asks a simple but often overlooked question: what does it actually feel like to live through complex pediatric heart care—not just medically, but emotionally and relationally?

To answer this question, we are conducting semi-structured interviews with families of children with single-ventricle conditions and analyzing them. In these conversations, families lead. We follow their stories and ask questions that are structured around what they emphasize, what they return to, and what they struggle to put into words. This approach has allowed us to see into the everyday realities of long-term care.

Across interviews, four themes consistently emerged. Families described a profound sense of unpredictability, where progress can shift overnight. Many spoke about the normalization of the abnormal, as hospital life reshapes routines and even their understanding of parenthood. Coping surfaced as both fragile and resilient, deeply tied to relationships and support systems. Finally, care complexity revealed the constant coordination required across providers, treatments, and diagnoses. These stories highlight gaps in care that metrics alone cannot capture and point toward more compassionate, family-centered practices.

Past Medical Humanities Research Projects

Antibiotic Accountability: Minimizing Waste, Maximizing Sustainability in Healthcare

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Michael Chang (Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital)
Spring 2025-Fall 2025

Project Description
There is a growing body of literature analyzing the impact of inefficient management of antibiotics at the hospital level. Significant quantities of antibiotics are wasted in pediatric hospitals including those in shortage. Beyond the economic impact, antibiotic waste is also related to supply chain resiliency and overall hospital waste and healthcare sustainability. (References: DOI: 10.1177/0018578719844164 and DOI: 10.1017/ice.2023.118)

The overall goal of this project is to examine antibiotic waste within a pediatric acute care hospital and identify opportunities for reducing waste. This project aligns with the medical humanities in the following ways: Environmental Impact: This project lets students explore the connection between healthcare and environmental sustainability, prompting discussions about how healthcare practices impact our environment in currently unaccounted ways. Stories and Communication: Talking to staff about their views on antibiotic use and waste can reveal everyday challenges and attitudes toward sustainability. These narratives could provide insights into the everyday challenges healthcare providers face in balancing effective patient care with sustainable practices. This aspect of the medical humanities brings human experiences and stories into the project, offering valuable qualitative data to support quantitative findings.

Project Report (Submitted by Carolyn Suradejvibul)
Our MHRI research journey began from the realization that our hospitals, dedicated to healing, are simultaneously major contributors to the climate crisis. Our mixed-methods study focused not only on medication waste in pediatric hospitals but also, equally importantly, on the attitudes and ethical readiness of healthcare staff to address this issue.

We quantified the problem, showing significant waste of high-volume IV drugs like Cefepime. But the most powerful finding was the consensus among staff. Through our survey, we learned that 100% of staff surveyed expressed interest in learning more about and getting involved in waste management, viewing sustainability as an essential part of their professional duty.
Yet, the majority of respondents stated that sustainability is not prioritized enough in their workplace. This "Attitude Gap" means that people are ready to change, but they lack the fundamental infrastructure, training, and leadership commitment to do so.

This research, guided by the medical humanities, suggests that the path to a healthier planet and a more ethical healthcare system lies not in convincing staff to care, but in institutions providing the necessary infrastructure and support to live up to the ethical ideals of modern medicine. This fellowship has taught me how to leverage a humanistic lens to advocate for systemic change, a skill I hope to bring with me into medical school and beyond. Our findings have shown us that waste management is not a distraction, but a moral extension of patient care, which we hope will open the door for impactful change driven from the bottom up.

Cardiovascular Genetics Education at UTHealth Houston

Faculty Mentors: Drs. Siddharth Prakash (UTHealth), Jane Grande-Allen (Rice)
Fall 2025-Spring 2026

Project Description
The overall goal of this project is to create learner-centered online training modules for clinicians that illustrate how genetic information is used in clinical practice. Dr. Prakash and his team recently created the Cardiovascular Genomics Certificate (GCG) training program to teach practicing clinicians about genetics. The student will receive close guidance on how to research and design two new modules for the CGC course describing the steps required for a provider to order a clinical genetic test, and the pros and cons of direct-to-consumer genetic tests. To obtain the perspectives of stakeholders, they will interview a patient, a genetic counselor, a clinical geneticist, and a genetic test company representative. They will then generate a storyboard, scripts, and graphics for two short interactive teaching modules in Canvas. At the end of the experience, they will narrate a clinical scenario from one of the modules for a short video that will be posted to VuMedi, a leading continuing medical education website for clinicians. They will also have the option to present the modules at a departmental medical conference.

Project Report (Submitted by Sofia Gachuz)
This project focused on designing educational tools to help physicians better understand and use genetic testing in clinical practice. As genetic testing becomes more common, a shortage of genetic counselors has shifted greater responsibility onto physicians who may not have formal training in genetics. This creates a growing need for accessible, practical education on how to order tests, interpret results, and communicate complex information to patients. Over the course of the fellowship, I worked on developing a learner-centered training module hosted on Canvas that presents realistic clinical scenarios physicians may encounter in their daily practice. The goal was to make the learning experience both practical and confidence-building, especially for providers navigating unfamiliar situations. In addition, I created and narrated three short-form educational videos that were published on VuMedi, a national continuing medical education platform. These videos were developed with creative independence and refined with feedback from a physician expert to ensure clinical accuracy. This experience has had a meaningful impact on my own education. I developed a stronger understanding of medical terminology, clinical workflows, and the nuances of genetic testing. I also gained experience translating complex scientific concepts into clear, engaging educational content. Most importantly, I saw how interdisciplinary work, combining research, communication, and design, can directly improve patient care by supporting clinicians. This fellowship has strengthened my interest in healthcare innovation and education, and I hope future students will see it as an opportunity to make tangible, real-world impact.

The Privilege of Medical Freedom

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Kirstin Matthews
Fall 2024-Spring 2026

Project Description
The Medical Freedom Movement gained traction in the past two decades around discussions of healthcare autonomy and consent increased. Once considered a fringe movement, it has evolved as a key political topic. Vaccine mandates and access to unproven therapies in particular are highly contested issues with Medical Freedom advocates arguing that the individual’s right to make decisions for their own health is more important that public health and protections from the marketing of fraudulent health products. However, where does medical freedom begin and end? Who are promoting these ideas and who can access medical freedom? This project explores how medical freedom is discussed and defined by advocates and in the literature. The goal is to assess how one’s identity can shape the extent to which they can access medical freedom. Student researchers will assist Dr. Matthews and Baker researchers with a literature review, manuscript preparation, development of outreach materials, and other administrative tasks.

Project Report (Submitted by Joseph Pham)
What does “freedom” mean in a healthcare system where equity remains unevenly distributed? This question anchors my research with Dr. Kirstin Matthews, as we explore how medical freedom, a term often championed in debates over vaccines, masks, and experimental treatments, reflects privilege rather than universal rights. Our work reveals that while some groups wield “freedom” to reject public health safeguards or access unproven therapies, marginalized communities face systemic barriers, such as distrust in medical systems, lack of resources, or discriminatory policies, that render such “choices” inaccessible or illusory.

By weaving historical analysis with modern examples, we’ve uncovered striking patterns. Early 20th-century resistance to medical regulations, such as vaccine mandates, mirrors today’s debates, where privileged individuals opt out of protections while vulnerable populations bear the risks. During COVID-19, disparities in vaccine access and exposure to misinformation highlighted how race, class, and geography determine who benefits from autonomy and who pays the price. Using frameworks from bioethics and critical race studies, we dissect these inequities: distrust among Black Americans, for instance, isn’t just personal hesitancy; it’s rooted in historical exploitation, challenging simplistic narratives of “choice.”
To deepen our understanding, we’ll expand our historical analysis through a broader literature review, tracing how anti-regulation movements have shaped modern health policies. Finally, we aim to translate findings into policy strategies that balance individual rights with collective well-being.

This fellowship has transformed how I approach health justice, equipping me with skills in ethical reasoning, policy analysis, and interdisciplinary collaboration. For future students, if you’re driven to tackle the intersection of equity and healthcare, this program offers a platform to challenge systemic inequities and redefine what “freedom” truly means—for everyone.

Experiencing the ICU as a Limited English Proficiency Family Member: A Phenomenological Study

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Natasha Afonso (Texas Children's Hospital)
Spring 2025-Spring 2026

Project Description
Patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) face significant risks within the healthcare system, including increased medical errors, lower satisfaction rates, and longer hospital stays. These challenges are particularly pronounced in the intensive care unit, a high-stakes environment where critical decisions are made and clear communication between providers and families is essential. The experience of LEP family members in this setting is complex and often fraught with additional stress due to language barriers which can impair their understanding of care decisions, increase feelings of isolation and hinder participation in their loved one's care. This project aims to explore the unique experiences of LEP family members of ICU patients, uncovering the challenges they face as well as how these barriers may impact patient outcomes. Using a phenomenological approach, the student will conduct in-depth interviews with LEP family members of ICU patients to capture their personal narratives and understand the impact of language barriers on their ICU experience.

Project Report (Submitted by Sofia Khoury and Giancarlo Valenzuela; May 2025)
Patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) experience significant risks due to health disparities, including 19.6% more medical errors than English-proficient patients, lower medical care satisfaction rates, and 6% longer hospital stays. These risks are pronounced within a high-stakes environment like the intensive care unit (ICU), where effective communication between providers and patient families is important for providing quality patient care. As research fellows, we led a phenomenological research study at Texas Children’s Hospital in order to identify the challenges that LEP patient families experience in an ICU setting. Family narratives gathered from semi-structured interviews revealed themes related to provider-family communication, interpreter service quality, emotional well-being through community and religious support, and perceived quality of care. With the goal of publishing our findings, we aim to promote initiatives that improve language and social support services in the ICU setting. The unique opportunity of working with an inter-disciplinary research team comprised of physicians and a postdoctoral medical humanities fellow, equipped us with diverse perspectives that we will use for our future research studies and contribute to improving medical care for a more equitable healthcare system. Through this experience, we’ve come to value the importance of considering personal narratives in guiding humanistic medical care that is attentive to patient and family circumstances.

Project Report (Submitted by Sofia Khoury; May 2026)
During my MHRI fellowship, I worked on a qualitative research project examining the experiences of families with Non-English Language Preference (NELP) in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). The project aims to identify challenges families face in the PICU and explore ways healthcare systems can improve communication and support for linguistically diverse patients and families.

To better understand these experiences, our team conducted twenty semi-structured interviews with family members of patients in the PICU and the CICU at Texas Children’s Hospital. Using qualitative and thematic analysis methods, we explored how language barriers affect communication with clinical teams, decision making, and families’ sense of understanding and participation in their child’s care. Data collection has now been completed, and the team is currently working on our manuscript. Preliminary findings suggest that families often prefer in-person interpreters and view them as more reliable and empathetic compared to video interpretation services. Participants also described the emotional and financial stress of hospitalization and emphasized the importance of community support, family networks, and faith during difficult times.

As an MHRI fellow, I gained hands-on experience in qualitative research methods, including conducting interviews, coding transcripts, and thematic analysis. This fellowship has strengthened my understanding of how medical humanities approaches can help illuminate patient and family experiences that may not be captured through traditional clinical research. Overall, this experience has greatly deepened my interest in patient-centered research and shown me the importance of communication and linguistic equity in healthcare.

Captive Consumers: Hunger, Inequality, and Violence in American Prison Food

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Chin Jou
Spring 2025

Project Description
This project is a book manuscript on prison food that I drafted and submitted this past June. The book manuscript discusses virtually every aspect of prison food in the United States, including nutrition and health. I hope to receive readers' reports on the manuscript soon, and expect to revise the manuscript in accordance with readers' reports and prepare it for publication in Spring 2025.

U.S. Latine Health Research

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Luziris Pineda Turi
Spring 2025

Project Description
SPAN 333: U.S. Latine Health focuses on the most current research about the topic. In order to keep the course up to date, Dr. Pinea Turi seeks a student capable of gathering and doing a review of research articles focused on different medical humanities topics connected to the U.S. Latine population. English and Spanish proficiency required.

Project Report (Submitted by Aditi Velgekar)
During my time as a Medical Humanities Research Institute (MHRI) Fellow, I had the incredible opportunity to collaborate with Dr. Luziris Turi on the U.S. Latine Health Research project, where we enhanced SPPO 333: Current Health Issues in Latine Communities. Our goal was to revitalize the course curriculum to reflect the most current research and lived realities of Latine individuals navigating the U.S. healthcare system.

This experience helped me see healthcare through a new lens—one shaped not only by data, but also by language, history, and culture. I conducted bilingual literature reviews to develop new curriculum modules that explore topics like language barriers, structural inequities, and the sociocultural aspects of health disparities. One compelling concept I explored was the “Hispanic Paradox,” which challenges conventional expectations about health and life expectancy among marginalized communities.

Through this fellowship, I learned how to translate complex realities into engaging and educational content for future students. I developed skills in bilingual research, curriculum development, and interdisciplinary collaboration—tools I will carry with me into medical school and my future as a physician. Looking forward, I hope this course will continue evolving to reflect the full diversity of Latine experiences, including Afro-Latine and Indigenous perspectives. Incorporating community voices—perhaps through guest speakers or oral histories—could deepen its impact. This fellowship has shaped not just my academic path, but also how I hope to practice medicine: with cultural awareness, empathy, and a deep respect for lived experience.

Understanding Patient and Family Refusal of CHG bathing

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Misti Ellsworth (Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital)
Spring 2025

Project Description
Hospital acquired infections (HAIs) contribute to significant patient morbidity and mortality. One pediatric central line associated blood stream infection (CLABSI) can increase the cost of care by $50,000 dollars and extend the hospitalization by up to 3 weeks (1). Daily chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG) bathing has been proven to reduce hospital acquired infections and is included in our maintenance bundle for central line care to prevent CLABSIs. Despite the evidence supporting this practice, compliance with daily bathing in our children’s hospital is currently not at our goal of 95%. Over the past 12 months, CHG bathing compliance across all units has ranged from 70-80%. Frequent reasons for missed CHG bathing include lack of nursing time, patient factors such as instability or hypothermia, and parent or patient refusal. Parent or family CHG bathing refusals account for 11-30% of missed baths. The reason for parent or patient refusal is not consistently documented and there is currently no process to address the refusal or to provide education on the benefits of CHG bathing. The aim of this project is to reduce CHG bathing refusals by 50% over the next 6 months. To accomplish this goal, we will identify the reasons for refusal, create a process to address these reasons and develop education on CHG bathing for patients and families. The student's work will engage with medical humanities through interviews to gain insight into the patient's perspective of CHG bathing. This will allow us to identify reasons behind refusals and help drive interventions that improve the experience for patients and families. The student and I will also partner with families to create educational materials to explain the "why" behind CHG bathing.

Goudie A, Dynan L, Brady PW, Rettiganti M. Attributable cost and length of stay for central line-associated bloodstream infections. Pediatrics. 2014 Jun;133(6):e1525-32. doi: 10.1542/peds.2013-3795. Epub 2014 May 5. PMID: 24799537; PMCID: PMC4258643.

Transnational Medical Education and Maternity Care Reform in Greece

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Eugenia Georges
Fall 2024-Spring 2025

Project Description
Greece has one of the highest rates of cesarean birth in the world. My project examines the ENGAGE Trial, the first nation-wide initiative to introduce innovative protocols and training programs across Greece to reduce unnecessary cesareans. Launched in 2021, the initiative was designed by a largely transnational consortium of diasporic Greek obstetricians, most of whom left Greece after the economic crisis to train and work in the UK. The student will assist in the analysis of life history narratives of the obstetricians and other medical professionals in the UK and Greece who been instrumental in the design and implementation of the initiative.

Project Report (Submitted by Anathea Carrigan)
This project synthesizes information from peer-reviewed journals, published statistical data, and clinical guidelines to investigate the influence of transnational medical education on the rising cesarean section rates in Greece, as well as the potential role of midwifery in reversing this trend.

Greece’s recent economic difficulties have proven challenging for the Greek National Health Services (NHS) as they have struggled to provide jobs and competitive salaries to Greek-trained doctors completing their residency and specialization. In search of better pay and highly specialized training, physicians in training now seek to complete their education abroad.
Internationally educated doctors may be more likely to pursue positions within private hospitals, which are better able to pay competitive salaries for physicians compared to the NHS. Within these private hospitals, C-section rates tend to be elevated, likely due to the financial incentives associated with performing surgical operations.

While a majority of both OB/GYNs and midwives in Greece find the current C-section rate unacceptable, there is a large gap between the percentage of C-sections midwives believe preventable and the percentage that OB/GYNs find to be preventable. Previous C-section is a common indicator for elective C-section, however, trial of labor after cesarean (TOLAC) is an alternative option. Midwives can provide detailed information about and preparation for TOLAC to patients. While TOLAC is a promising alternative to C-sections in patients who have previously had C-sections, the number of midwives and nurses in Greece has steadily declined over the past 15 years. Increasing support for midwifery staff in hospitals offers a way to reduce the high C-section rate in Greece in the upcoming years.

The Pandemic Family

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Ilana Gershon
Fall 2024-Spring 2025

Project Description
I explore how US-American family dynamics shaped people’s responses to the pandemics, focusing on two aspects. First, I explore how particular structural roles in families shaped whose interpretation of Covid information would be acted upon. Second, I analyze how patterned forms of negotiations and decision-making within these families shaped people’s responses and interpretation to shifting medical information in the first two years of the pandemic. Using anthropological understandings of family decision-making as a starting point for understanding responses to medical knowledge, this research will offer an alternative understanding of health communication that situates the individual(s) in the network they are embedded in, and, in turn, enables more effective and active medical communication. The project highlights how socially intertwined people are as they disseminate and decide with others how to act upon the medical information they receive in culturally specific ways. My oral history interviews with families about their pandemic decisions revealed that the most pressing questions around how people responded to Covid-19 risks or government regulations were not whether or not individuals received clear medical information that they were equipped to interpret. Rather, people’s responses largely depended upon complex negotiations and decision-making within their families, shaped by cultural assumptions around who could tell another what to do. Any student researcher will learn qualitative techniques for analyzing people's interpretative strategies processing medical information.

Health Aesthetics: An Exhibit and Discussion on Art in the Medical Humanities

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Travis Alexander
Spring 2024

Project Description
In the late spring, Rice will host an event that combines a small art exhibit with an associated panel discussion of scholars on the role art can play in the medical humanities. It will be open to Rice and the Houston community. Student Researchers will assist me in planning, promoting, and coordinating the event.

Project Report (Submitted by Camila DeAlba)
Health Aesthetics was a panel and art exhibition featuring Pato Herbert by the Rice University Medical Humanities Research Institute. Dr. Travis Alexander, a Lecturer in Medical Humanities at Rice, planned and hosted the event with my assistance as an MHRI fellow. The panel discussion featured Amanda Caleb, Pato Herbert, and Megan Voeller and examined the role of visual art in medical humanities research and teaching. The gallery opening featured a small collection of Pato’s recent works dealing with themes across health and medicine. Pato Hebert is a visual artist and educator currently working as an associate art professor and chair at NYU Tish School of the Art’s Department of Art and Public Policy. Amanda Caleb is a professor of Medical Humanities at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine and Megan Voeller is a Philadelphia-based educator, curator, writer, and director of Humanities at Thomas Jefferson University whose work focuses on critical intersections of contemporary art and health.

Having this event annually would allow the Rice Medical Humanities Research Institute to explore the vast amount of social issues present in healthcare. It would even be a means of mapping the everchanging social landscape of healthcare. The event could also involve more scholar-student collaboration by showcasing student art and asking students to speak at panels about their experience with art and education. This fellowship has not only given me more experience with event planning at Rice but has continued to add to my understanding of medicine as a field with several interconnected dimensions.

Inclusive engineering design of bioelectronic form factors to monitor hypertension among US Hispanics/Latinos

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Raudel Avila
Spring 2024-Fall 2025

Project Description
Bioelectronic devices with soft mechanics, wireless connectivity, and electronic components that continuously track physiological signals can be placed epidermally on key locations to track hypertension and other cardiovascular risk factors. These devices, with form factors that rely on miniaturized geometries with soft-hard composite material architectures, aim to expand medical diagnostics capabilities beyond hospitals and clinics. However, the deployment of these devices is not homogenous as one size fits all patients type of approach. The cultural connection of technology and medicine in respective communities needs to be considered in the design to ensure patient adoption and continuous use. The prevalence of hypertension (30% of Hispanics have high blood pressure) and other cardiovascular diseases among Hispanic Americans makes diagnostic and treatment a critical need among the community where additional economic, language, and educational barriers increase the risk of accurate diagnostics and patient compliance. The student project will focus on identifying the key engineering design elements and proposing a conceptual design strategy that can eliminate one or multiple barriers to accelerate medical technology adoption among US Hispanics/Latinos for diagnostic and treatment of hypertension.

Project Report (Submitted by Elena Carusetta and Vedha Penmecha)
The project outlines the conceptualization, design, modeling, and analysis of a bioelectronic device featuring inclusive engineering principles to monitor hypertension among the Hispanic/Latino populations in the United States. We are focused on ensuring the adoption and continuous use or adherence to these technologies within the Hispanic/Latino communities by considering both the engineering and cultural aspects of technology and medicine in the conceptualization and design process.

Thus far we have identified specific needs and design components of the project. Through the ABAQUS modeling we have worked to develop a 2D design for what the potential prototype of the device might look like. We have looked into the literature about which parameters to include in order to ensure accurate blood pressure readings from a cutaneous level. Such parameters include arterial structure, skin tone, and displacement, as well as other pertinent information. From the public health side, we have created maps that utilize national health service data to understand the general barriers affecting the Houston-are Latino/Hispanic population. Beyond social factors, there are additional challenges that these patients face such as “white-coat effect” on blood pressure as well as a gap in culturally competent care.⁴ This information will help inform us what the gap is currently both socially and geographically in order to better tailor the integration and distribution of the blood pressure device. This is a general overview of specific steps we have taken and knowledge we have gained this semester.

Family and health caregiver perceptual impact on management of pediatric pain, sedation, delirium and withdrawal in critical ill children

Faculty Mentor: Drs. Natasha Afonso and Aarti Bavare (Texas Children's Hospital)
Spring 2024-Fall 2025

Project Description
Critically ill children admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) are very likely to need pain management and/ or sedation to accomplish clinical goals of critical care. The pain and sedative medications need to be judiciously used and weaned so that they do not allow for undue suffering or cause side effects and withdrawal syndrome. Critical illness and sedative medications also place the patients at risk of experiencing delirium (an uncomfortable state with alteration of attention, consciousness, and cognition, with a reduced ability to focus). The state makes patients not feel like normal people and impacts their response to therapies and eventual health outcomes.

Patients and family members are crucial partners of health caregivers in determining pain thresholds and diagnosing delirium. To treat patients and families as people there needs to be a strong collaborative relationship that health caregivers need to build with them to understand their preferences and develop a comprehensive shared responsibility plan for pain, sedation, delirium and withdrawal management. For both, health caregivers and patients' families; socio cultural backgrounds, prior experiences and beliefs guide assessment of pain and hence the response to mitigate it.

Our goal is to understand the spectrum of perceptions about pain, sedation, delirium, withdrawal management preferences that exist in our patient's families and nurses and understand the associations if any with their sociodemographic characteristics.

The impact of inclusion of personalized stories into the medical record

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Nirica Borges and Dr. Aine Cooke (Texas Children's Hospital)
Spring 2024-Fall 2025

Project Description
Understanding a patient’s values and preferences are key to providing high quality Patient Centered Care. Hospitalized patients may encounter dozens of healthcare providers, and hospital care teams face challenges in sharing complex clinical and non-clinical information over time. This project aims to address this deficit by creating a Narrative in the patient or family’s own words about their child. Students will develop a narrative of a hospitalized child’s story to share in the medical record, and assess the impact of this on clinical care teams. They will collaborate with children (if age appropriate) and families in developing a narrative of the child’s family life, likes and dislikes, daily routine, and anything else the family wishes is included. We will then survey healthcare providers to assess if the story was helpful to them in providing Patient Centered Care.

Project Report (Submitted by Sarah Davidson and Kai Hyodo)
This project, entitled “The impact of inclusion of personalized stories into the medical record,” is a narrative medicine project led by Dr. Nirica M. Borges and Dr. Aine Cooke. The project involves collecting stories about the lives of young children with life-threatening heart conditions. Typically, we speak with the parents and ask them about the sources of comfort for their child, the impact of their child’s disease on their life, and any specific information they want care-providers to know. The goal of this project is to improve the quality of care by giving a voice to the patients and their unique needs, wants, desires, and stories. Instead of taking an illness-centered approach, this narrative medicine project takes a human-centered lens, focusing on the patient’s personal experiences and beliefs. From the interviews we conducted, we found that narratives can help physicians and nurses get to know patients and their families on a deeper level, allowing them to form powerful, personal relationships. The next steps would be to give the interview write-ups to care providers. Then, surveys should be designed to gauge how the narratives impacted the quality of care from the perspectives of both the patients and providers.

During this experience, we improved our understanding of qualitative research and gained a new perspective on healthcare. We learned that physicians currently take a very medical-focused approach that often detracts from the patient’s individualized experience. However, by creating a space for patients to share their own stories, hospitals can be transformed into more friendly, inviting, and caring spaces.

Deer Trails Through the Woods: A Neurocognitive Fairytale

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Marcia Brennan
Spring 2024

Project Description
This Research Assistant position would provide assistance to the professor with a book project currently in development. Through an imaginative engagement with neuroaesthetics, this book presents the imagery of the forest as a creative metaphor for re-envisioning the structures of the human brain, the distressing mental health conditions of anxiety and OCD, and the process of finding a better pathway forward. By engaging these subjects, this book will contribute meaningfully to forging new pathways within the resonant fields of Aesthetics, Neuroaesthetics, Education, and Psychology. The student research portion is described below.

Project Report (Submitted by Madison Zhao)
I’ve always had a passion for neuroscience and visual arts, and a particularly keen interest in finding ways to combine the two. Prior to matriculation, I wanted to find opportunities in the growing field of Neuroaesthetics. Working on illustrations for Deer Trails has allowed me to grow in my understanding of the field by finding creative ways to visualize neuroanatomy for lay populations. I’ve been able to make numerous visual aids that metaphorically incorporate aspects of the academic neuroscience field. I’ve read papers on brain imaging studies to create more accurate reflections of mental illness. With each drawing I find myself more curious and engaged in the field of Neuroaesthetics. What started as a general interest has now formed into specific questions I have for the growing field. I continue to wonder how art can be used to make complex neuroscience concepts accessible, or how they may specifically impact children’s understanding of mental illnesses. As a student majoring in both Neuroscience and Visual Arts, I doubted I would find such a perfect research experience to aid my academics. This project has allowed me to draw on both my creative and scientific skills to create visual outputs rooted in scientific concepts. This fellowship continues to redefine my interests in the medical humanities. I envision a future of medicine where the Humanities work in tandem with science to create a better, more holistic system of care. Ultimately, I hope to bring the skills I’ve gained through this fellowship into my future career as a physician.

Medical Interpreter Narratives

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Kirstin Matthews
Spring 2024

Project Description
Non-English speakers and those who have limited English proficiency often rely on the services of others to interpret what healthcare providers are telling them and to make their own needs and questions understood. These medical interpreters play a critical role in advancing the well-being of under-served, marginalized, or otherwise vulnerable people, but often face their own unique ethical challenges different from others in the healthcare system. This project will develop of an open-access collection of narratives from medical interpreters and host a workshop at Rice University to disseminate the collection.

Project Report (Submitted by Mia Baumann)
This past semester, I had the opportunity to collaborate on the medical interpreter narratives project, which empowered interpreters from many different backgrounds to share their perspectives and experiences in a manuscript intended for the Narrative Inquiries in Bioethics Journal. My role was to design dissemination materials for the manuscript and compile a comprehensive list of attendees from the Houston area for the workshop, which aimed to share the results of the project with healthcare professionals to raise awareness of the challenges of medical interpreters in their home institutions. It was incredibly rewarding to attend the medical interpreter narratives dissemination workshop with a lively group of physicians, interpreters, and bioethicists that I had helped assemble. Many physicians were unaware of the complexities of interpretation or the ways in which they could facilitate the role of an interpreter. I had also volunteered as an interpreter in a previous semester, and the workshop broadened my understanding of the role as well. Because of this experience, I, like many of the other workshop attendees, recognize that interpreters should not be regarded as mere translation machines, but rather dynamic mediators with the power to advocate for patients and empathize with them. As artificial intelligence continues to enter into the dialogue between physicians and patients, it’s more important than ever for interpreters to incorporate their humanity within their roles. Compassionate, patient-centered care is a skill that AI has yet to grasp, making it essential to the modern-day interpreter. The most competent interpreters are those that recognize that embracing their humanity in patient encounters is a sign of empathy and strength, not weakness.

AI for Health Equity

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Kirsten Ostherr

Project Description
Student researchers will work with Dr. Ostherr to identify, analyze and summarize AI for healthcare projects and their intended or likely impact on issues related to health equity and inequity. Additional work will involve interviews with patient advocates related to their perspectives on AI regulation. The resulting work will form a database and reports to be posted on the Medical Humanities Research Institute website, presented at conferences, and published in peer-reviewed journals.