History of Medicine Lecture: HIV Out Loud: Building the History of an Epidemic
HIV Out Loud: Building the History of an Epidemic
P.I. Nixon Medical Historical Library History of Medicine Lecture
May 28th | 6PM
Presented by Dr. Rachel Pearson and Dr. Yolanda Crous
This presentation introduces HIV Out Loud, a collaborative project between community members, medical students, and the P.I. Nixon Medical Historical Library. The project explores the critical role of stigma in the ongoing HIV epidemic and highlights how public history can be used as a tool for change.
By training medical students as oral historians and partnering with people living with HIV to share their stories, HIV Out Loud builds a digital archive that humanizes the epidemic and reshapes medical education.
This lecture explores how storytelling and historical preservation can foster empathy, reduce stigma, and contribute to ending the HIV epidemic.
The lecture will take place over Zoom. Register for the lecture.
Rachel Pearson, MD PhD, is the Humanities Director at the Charles E. Cheever, Jr. Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics, where she teaches literature and the arts and leads the HIV Out Loud project. She is also a hospital pediatrician at UT Health San Antonio. As a civic humanist, Dr. Pearson publishes essays on medicine and the medical humanities for general readers in The New Yorker, the Washington Post, Texas Monthly, the Texas Observer and elsewhere. Her book No Apparent Distress: A Doctor’s Coming-of-Age on the Front Lines of American Medicine was published by WW Norton in 2019.
Yolanda Crous, MD, is a second year Psychiatry Resident at the University of Texas Health San Antonio with a long-standing interest in the medical humanities and medical stigma. She has been involved with the HIV Out Loud project since she was a first-year medical student at the Long School of Medicine.
