On January 15th, 2008, the inaugural event for the new Certificate Program in Humanities, Health Sciences, and Society featured a lecture by Dr. John A. Rich on the topic "In the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time: Violence, Narrative, and Public Health." The event was presented by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of English and Philosophy to celebrate the new Certificate Program. About 20 people settled into Disque 109 to listen to Rich, a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2006, and Director of the Center for Academic Public Health Practice.
Dr. Donna Murasko, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, graciously welcomed the Head of the Certificate Program, Dr. Emilie S. Passow, remarking that the purpose of the Certificate Program was to allow "more perception in life," and the Certificate Program would aid in the union of literature and medicine at Drexel. Passow, in turn, introduced Rich, commenting that she could see no better way for today, the 15th and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, to be celebrated than to have Rich speak about every person's right to health care.
Dr. Emilie S. Passow and Dr. John A. Rich at the inaugural event.
Rich began his lecture by stressing that violence is an "American thing, not an urban thing." He has found through extensive studies with trauma patients that many of them summarize their trauma as an incident of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This intrigued Rich, who heard it from both the innocent and the not-so-innocent, and he decided to dig more deeply.
Rich brought up an article published last October about the homicide rate in Philadelphia; in 2007, there were 391 murders. The article in question referred to the murder rate in October 2006: 390. The title of the article stated that the murder rate was "cooling." Rich circled the title with his laser pen, and laughed with the audience. Someone, he remarked, was grasping at straws; the murder rate is not "cooling" because it is one person less. But the article was a good example of how "the numbers, the statistics, often obscure the people behind them."
Rich then presented some startling statistics about race and the homicide rate: a high percentage of black men were involved with aggravated assaults, shootings and homicides, according to his data. Because of this alarming statistics, while Rich was still working in Boston, he began a clinic that targeted men age 17-29 who were trauma victims. The Young Men's Health Clinic, born in 1992, served as a door to community services and an intermediary doctor's office for males who were no longer children, but who weren't really adults yet either. Rich found that the men he treated were usually involved in two types of systems: the criminal justice system, and his institution. It was through his interactions here that he became interested in the stories of each individual patient.
"The notion of stories," Rich said, "can and should function in the medical health system." But he has found that recently, technology has supplanted stories about medical trauma. Time is also a factor in the medical system's accused acrimony towards patients' descriptions. This results in both traumatized patients and providers. "Stories have been squeezed out of the medical care system."
Stories are not just "What happened?" They reveal meaning, which changes over time. More importantly, stories are a joint construction of meaning – and the doctor and the patient create that meaning together, Rich believes; the story is changed by the interaction of the two people. In a system that has increasingly little time to hear the stories of trauma victims, it has become more important than ever that these stories be told. Narratives of trauma can be recalled more intensely than other memories, and trauma victims need to talk about their experiences. This is why Rich firmly believes that stories belong in the medical health care system, and that they are a vital part of it.
Ali Cahill is a senior at Drexel majoring in English. She is also the Managing Editor of ASK.