Curriculum Development

A core element of my practice is developing and leading innovative educational programs in the health humanities, from academic courses to co-curricular programs, in medical education and museum settings.

Asano Humanities and Health Certificate

Program Title
Asano Humanities and Health Certificate

Dates
2017-ongoing

Role
Program Director

Institution
Thomas Jefferson University

Publications:

With the past and ongoing support of many colleagues and students, I created the Asano Humanities & Health Certificate co-curricular program to encourage and reward health professions students’ sustained engagement in health humanities programs throughout the academic year. The program invites students to earn the certificate by attending eight programs from a yearlong calendar of more than 50 events and completing a reflection portfolio of four essays or creative responses.

Since 2017, more than 600 students from nine Jefferson colleges of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, life science, rehabilitation sciences, humanities and design have completed the program. Medical students may complete the certificate once for academic credit as a humanities selective; all other students participate on a voluntary basis for enrichment.

Events offered range from visiting speaker talks, panel discussions, reading groups and arts-based workshops. Participating students choose the unique combination of events that stimulates their personal and professional growth.

In response to student requests, we created an optional Anti-Racism in Health Focus in 2021, allowing participants to specialize their certificate with a focused theme. Development of a disability justice focus is currently underway.

JeffMD Humanities Selectives

Program Title
JeffMD Humanities Selectives

Dates
2017-ongoing

Role
Program Director

Institution
Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University

Publications:

Since 2017, I have directed the JeffMD Humanities Selectives program at Sidney Kimmel Medical College, where medical students complete two Humanities Selectives during the preclinical phase of the JeffMD curriculum.

Our slate of approximately 24 health Humanities Selective courses provides students with opportunities to strengthen key skills of doctoring through engagement in the arts and humanities. These skills include close observation, emotional awareness and empathy, team and interpersonal communication, openness to perspectives of patients and colleagues, comfort with ambiguity and making mistakes, understanding social and historical dimensions of health, and self-care and burnout prevention.

The Humanities Selectives are immersive, arts-based experiences and participation-oriented seminars that promote support and bonding between classmates and offer creative respite within medical school. These courses are taught by a diverse team of educators from arts, humanities and health professions fields—as well as community partner organizations including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Vetri Community Partnership—and connect course-specific learning objectives to SKMC graduation competencies.

Art In Health

In 2012, I led the development of The Art of Attending, a series of co-curricular workshops designed to train USF Health students in observation, communication and critical thinking skills through arts-based pedagogy.

Supported by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, the project was a partnership between the USF Contemporary Art Museum and USF Health. More than 200 students from health professions including medicine, public health, pharmacy, physical therapy, nursing, social work and speech-language pathology participated in the workshop series.

“The Art of Attending” used inquiry-based instructional methods inspired by Visual Thinking Strategies. This structured art discussion format, known as VTS, was designed by a museum educator and cognitive researcher to improve visual literacy through open-ended conversations about art that encourage evidentiary reasoning, tolerance of ambiguity and perspective-taking. The unique pedagogy of “The Art of Attending” workshops incorporated VTS but expanded beyond this established method to include modules drawn from disciplines of studio art, dance and music, as well as museum education.

Our collaborative teaching and research team included arts educators as well as faculty from medicine, nursing and public health and researchers from organizational psychology.