News from Arts and Humanities in Medicine
The Maine Arts & Humanities in Medicine Certificate, part of the UMaine Intermedia Program, is in its third year. Professionals and students, from healthcare and art research backgrounds, converge over the course of one year to discuss the role of humanities in wellness practice. The program is designed to support practitioners, and the seminar is delivered online. Students and faculty can participate from across the country. In keeping with University of Maine’s R1 rating, the program investigates modalities of research that serve the intersection of arts and medicine.
The faculty and TA support for the certificate include:
Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, PhD, graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine and trained in family medicine, psychiatry, and clinical psychology. He completed his residencies in family medicine and in psychiatry at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. He is a clinical associate professor of family medicine at the University of New England. He works with Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness in their efforts to develop uniquely indigenous styles of healing and
health care for use in Maine’s indigenous communities.
Patrick McFarlane spent a decade training new physicians in graduate medical education residency training focused on integrated behavioral medicine, psychiatry, and family medicine. He is currently focused on primary care research and teaching related to violence as a social determinant of health, and decolonizing medicine and science. He is a founding faculty member of the Art and Humanities in Medicine program. His background is psychology, social work, nursing as a nurse practitioner in psychiatry/ family medicine.
Dr. Susan L Smith, is a practicing artist and educator, Associate Research Professor of Art, and Graduate Coordinator of the Intermedia Programs. Smith’s research is situated within issues of land/power and questions concerning art’s position in a late capitalist society. First and foremost an artist, her practice encompasses community- based collaboration, and site-based research. Susan is currently working with the Urban Soil Institute, NYC on the presence of forever chemicals, or PFAS in communities’ soil and water, and the attempts to have a sustainable creative practice in an unsustainable world.
Dr. Alexis Hope loves to create playful experiences that help people find joy, self-compassion, and connection with others. Alexis spent a decade at MIT, where she received her PhD at the MIT Media Lab in 2021. As a designer, she has worked across a variety of domains — ranging from cameras for deep-sea exploration, creative learning technologies for children, artistic tools for zero-gravity environments in orbit, “hackathons” to improve breast pumps, low-cost ultrasound machines for providing prenatal care in areas with limited resources. In the Arts and Humanities in Medicine Program, Alexis is excited to explore community engagement as an avenue to connect more deeply with topics related to health, healing, and care.
Augusta Sparks Farnum is a multi disciplinary artist, with her masters in Arts in Medicine from the University of Florida, and the Maine Arts & Humanities in Medicine Certificate from the University of Maine. In March 2020, she built a nationally 
acknowledged social prescription program for quarantined patients in partnership with Providence St. Mary’s Medical Center, and Population Health. Since 2021, she has been working as a research assistant with a national group led by Dr. Hugh Silk, and supported by FMEC, designing a Humanities in Family Medicine Database for faculty to use in residency curriculum. In 2022, Augusta started the Intermedia’s interdisciplinary Nano Cellulose Fiber artist research program with the University’s Process Development Center. Augusta Sparks Farnum is a second year MFA student in the Intermedia Program, and the teaching assistant for the certificate program.
For more information please contact: Augusta Sparks Farnum augusta.farnum@maine.edu