The Program in the Arts, Humanities, & Health recognizes that art and the humanities can foster empowerment, equity, and community, and serve to humanize medical practice and education. The arts and humanistic inquiry are powerful tools for cultivating health, and serve to both nurture and reflect the human spirit. Further, the arts and humanities are uniquely capable of connecting people–caregivers and patients, students and teachers, institutions and their surrounding communities–in the realization and experience of their shared humanity.

The Program in the Arts, Humanities, and Health (PAHH) engages members of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions (JHMI) and East Baltimore communities in a range of activities at the nexus of artistic expression, humanist inquiry and well-being. Expanding the mission of the Office of Cultural Affairs, which has furthered medical arts and humanities at JHMI since the 1970s, PAHH: (1) partners with relevant stakeholders across the university and city to offer new cultural programs (e.g., concerts, film series, discussions of poetry, literature and art, etc.); (2) serves as a clearinghouse for ongoing JHMI initiatives at the intersection of the arts, humanities and health; and (3) cultivates stronger relationships between JHMI and the East Baltimore community through the arts.

Gail Geller, ScD, MHS, is Professor Emerita, having recently retired from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Berman Institute of Bioethics (BI).  She held joint appointments in the Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Krieger School’s Department of Sociology, and an adjunct appointment in the Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine.  A sociologist by background, Dr. Geller’s scholarship focused on the ethical and social dimensions of medical care, medical education and public health. Of particular relevance to the outreach mission of PAHH, several of the NIH grants on which Dr. Geller has served as Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator have involved significant community engagement. Some of these projects have focused on cultivating respectful and trusting relationships in the community. Dr. Geller has always been drawn to the intersection between bioethics, medicine and the arts.  This interest has led to meaningful interactions with the Science & Entertainment Exchange at the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.  With support from PAHH, and as former Director of Education Initiatives at the Berman Institute, she has overseen the planning and implementation of several arts-related performances and events. In the School of Medicine, she co-directed the “culture of medicine” core theme and the Scholarly Concentration called HEART (Humanism, Ethics, and the Art of Medicine) which included significant attention to the role of the arts in medical education.  She also taught in the “Medical Humanities & Social Medicine” elective. in collaboration with an academy-award winning documentary filmmaker, Dr. Geller has produced a number of documentaries for the training of health care professionals. Some of these films have won Houston International Film Festival, CINE Golden Eagle, Remy and Telly awards.  Dr. Geller currently serves on the Neuroarts Academic Network Working Group.

Dr. Kamna Balhara is an associate professor of emergency medicine (EM) at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and holds a dual appointment in Medicine, Science, and the Humanities at the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. She earned a master’s degree in French Cultural Studies from Columbia University before completing medical school and residency at Johns Hopkins, where she served as chief resident. She later held residency program leadership roles at the University of Texas San Antonio and at Johns Hopkins.

An innovator in the health humanities, Dr. Balhara has led humanities curricula for medical students, residents, faculty, undergraduates, and interprofessional learners. She is a founder and co-director of the Health Humanities at Hopkins EM initiative, which brings humanities-based programming to institutional, community, and national audiences, and she directs the Health Humanities Fellowship in Emergency Medicine. Her scholarship spans graduate medical education, the humanities, and social determinants of health, and she creates tools and resources for educators seeking to use the humanities to advance equity in health care and health professions education.

Dr. Balhara has presented internationally on health equity and the humanities in medicine and was selected as a Harvard Macy Institute Art Museum-Based Health Professions Education Fellow. Her work has received support from the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Josiah Macy Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Emergency Medicine Foundation. She chairs the School of Medicine’s Professionalism Committee, serves as co-councilor for the Johns Hopkins Alpha Omega Alpha chapter, sits on the steering committee for the national Health Humanities Consortium, and is on the editorial board of Academic Emergency Medicine. Dr. Balhara is excited to join the PAHH team to expand how the arts and humanities can promote the health and flourishing of all stakeholders in the JHMI and East Baltimore communities.