AUA Public Health Seminar to Explore Impact of Narrative Medicine on Alzheimer’s Disease

YEREVAN–The American University of Armenia is organizing a public health seminar on February 21 exploring the impact of Narrative Medicine on the treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease. The lecture is part of AUA’s Public Health Seminar Series, organized by the College of Health Sciences.

The event will feature a presentation by University of Vermont Assistant Professor Dr. Dana Walrath. It will be held at AUA’s Manoogian Hall, in the Paramaz Avedisian Building, from 6:30-7:30.

Dr. Walrath is an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Vermont and a Women’s and Gender Studies affiliated faculty member. After earning her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, she taught at the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University. Dr. Walrath broke new ground in medical and biological anthropology through her work on biocultural aspects of childbirth.

She has also written on a wide range of topics related to gender in paleoanthropology, the social production of sickness and health, sex differences, genetics, and evolutionary medicine. Her work has appeared in edited volumes and in journals such as Current Anthropology, American Anthropologist, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, and Anthropology Now. She is also a co-author of a leading anthropology textbook series that is published in a variety of languages.

Dr. Walrath developed a novel curriculum in medical education at the University of Vermont’s College of Medicine that brings humanism, anthropological theory and practice, narrative medicine, and professionalism skills to first-year medical students.

She also has a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and has shown her art work in galleries throughout the country.

Her recent work on the Alzheimer’s disease, Aliceheimer’s, combines anthropology with memoir and visual art. Her verse novel, Grey White Down, set during the Armenian genocide is forthcoming from Random House/ Delacorte in 2014. Spanning a variety of disciplines, Dr. Walrath’s work has been supported by diverse sources such as the National Science Foundation, the Templeton Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Centers for Disease Control, the Health Resources Services Administration, the Vermont Studio Center, the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Dr. Walrath is currently a Fulbright Scholar at the AUA College of Health Sciences, working on a project that builds upon her Aliceheimer’s series titled “the Narrative Anthropology of Aging in Armenia.”