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The Art of Healing: Students Find Meaning and Beauty Through Writing and Art

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2026 Health Professions Students' Creative Writing & Art Contest

More than twenty years ago, the family of Marguerite Rush Lerner, MD, established and endowed the first Program for Humanities in Medicine contest. On May 7, faculty, friends, and family gathered to celebrate this year’s award-winning artists and writers.

Lerner was a professor of dermatology and a children’s book author whose passion for medicine and the arts inspired the contest.

Though originally limited to prose and poetry by medical students, the contest has since expanded to include visual art. It also welcomes submissions from students across Yale’s health professions schools and programs.

Medical students were eligible for the Marguerite Rush Lerner prizes, while all other Yale health professions students were eligible for Program for Humanities in Medicine (PHM) prizes.

During the award ceremony, prose and poetry winners recited their winning pieces, and artists described the inspiration behind their work.

2026 Health Professions Students' Creative Writing & Art Contest

Artist inspiration

First-year student Michelle Mantilla, Yale MD-PhD '33, shared that she is an avid knitter and that her work, Penicillin Pacman, was created during her Attacks and Defenses course. The headband is made of wool fiber and features the chemical structure of penicillin.

Ral Vandenhoudt, a graduating student at Yale School of Public Health (YSPH), said that Chickenpox was inspired by the intersection of science and art within the medical humanities. The artwork combines these elements in the form of a chicken.

Jasmine Jiang, MD ’27, explained that her inspiration for In Remembrance came from the labor and delivery unit at Yale New Haven Hospital. "Whenever there is perinatal loss at YNHH, a turquoise sign bearing a white Calla Lily is posted on the labor room door, mostly as a gentle reminder to those entering of what the family is going through. I saw such a sign as a student on my Maternal Fetal Medicine rotation, pausing briefly each time I passed by as I took in the weight of its significance. The Calla Lily symbolizes purity, rebirth, and resurrection, and is often used in the context of miscarriage or stillbirth. The three blooming lilies represent each trimester of gestation. The butterfly’s turquoise hues match the color of the sign I once saw on my rotation. The composition partially references a historical painting by George Cochran Lambdin. This painting is in honor of the lives carried but never held and is dedicated to those who have experienced perinatal bereavement."

Patterned Beauties: The Marks We Share by Lenique Huggins, MD ’27, was inspired by a woman Huggins met who was receiving phototherapy. Huggins used pen and pencil on paper to create a celebration of the patterns found on the body and in nature.

YSPH student Megan Tachev’s piece Respite was an ode to liminal spaces. Tachev remarked that places like staircases offer a calm and quiet respite that has always entranced her, and this work highlights these often-overlooked areas.

2026 Health Professions Students' Creative Writing & Art Contest

Winners

PROSE

  • 1st Place: T.J. Debicella, Yale School of Nursing '27, The Questions I Was Taught Not to Ask
  • 2nd Place: Ella Shannon, Yale School of Nursing '28, 189.56
  • 3rd Place: Chizobam Ugboaja, Yale School of Medicine '29, Mma, Grief, and Me
  • Honorable Mention: Sanjana Ranade, Yale School of Public Health '27, The Lies of Birch Lake

POETRY

  • 1st Place (tie): Elizabeth Watson, Yale School of Medicine '29, this year
  • 1st Place (tie): Olivia Belliveau, Yale School of Medicine '26, Scar
  • 1st Place (tie): Olivia Belliveau, Yale School of Medicine '26, I may have forgotten a few things
  • 2nd Place (tie): Julia A. Chiemi, Yale School of Medicine '27, The oath's cost
  • 2nd Place (tie): Caitlin Leong, Yale Physician Associate Program '26, hands
  • 3rd Place: Alicia Clarke, Yale School of Nursing '26, Vitreous
  • Honorable Mention: Yosra Raziani, Yale School of Nursing '27, Me, After

ART

  • 1st Place: Isabella Gamez, Yale School of Public Health '27, The Danse Macabre
  • 2nd Place (tie): Ral Vandenhoudt, Yale School of Public Health '26, Chickenpox
  • 2nd Place (tie): Michelle Mantilla, Yale MD-PhD '33, Penicillin Pacman
  • 3rd Place: Jasmine Jiang, Yale School of Medicine '27, In Remembrance
  • Honorable Mention: Lenique Huggins, Yale School of Medicine '27, Patterned Beauties: The Marks We Share
  • Honorable Mention: Megan Tachev, Yale School of Public Health '27, Respite
  • Honorable Mention: Miriam Levine, Yale School of Nursing '28, Anatomy of Displacement: A Study in Medicalized Motherhood

The ceremony concluded with thanks to Karen Kolb, PHM Manager, for her work on the contest, and to this year’s contest judges: Aba Black, Terry Dagradi, JoAnne Wilcox, Muffy Pendergast, Sarah Cross, Lorence Gutterman, Melissa Grafe, Randi Hutter-Epstein, Kenneth Morford, Sharon Ostfeld-Johns, Vincent Quagliarello, Nicole Langan Maciejak, Ophelia Empleo-Frazier, Lacey Jones, Ash Alpert, and Anne Merritt.

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Author

Dana Haugh, MLS
Communications, Senior Officer

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