Crossing Over

David Barnard is an internationally recognized authority on the integration of the humanities in medical education and the humanistic aspects of end-of-life care. He retired as Professor of Medicine and Law at the University of Pittsburgh, the founding Director of the University of Pittsburgh Institute to Enhance Palliative Care, and Director of the Global Health and Human Rights Track at the School of Law. Previously, he was University Professor of Humanities and Chairman of the Department of Humanities at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, the first Department of Humanities ever established at any medical school. Anna Towers is Associate Professor in the Departments of Oncology and Family Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, and a palliative care physician at the McGill University Health Centre. She was Director of Palliative Care McGill from 1999-2009. In this position she helped create the first accredited residency in Palliative Medicine for Canada. She was Chair of the biennial International Congress on Palliative Care from 2004 to 2014. Her academic interests include ethical issues in palliative care, and, more recently, cancer-related lymphedema, an area in which she has received international recognition. Patricia Boston is currently a clinical professor in The Department of Family Practice at The University of British Columbia. She was Director of the UBC Division of Palliative Care between 2003 - 2012 prior to which she was Associate Director of The McGill Programs in Whole Person Care. Patricia's research and teaching interests include: palliative care, grief and bereavement, psycho-social nursing issues and qualitative research methodologies. Yanna Lambrinidou is a medical ethnographer, environmental justice activist, and affiliate faculty in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech. She served as the Smith College Lucille Geier Lakes Writer-in-Residence and the EPA National Drinking Water Advisory Council (NDWAC) Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) workgroup. She advised former Michigan Governor Rick Snyder's Flint Water Interagency Coordinating Committee (FWICC) and testified at the US House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee hearing on the Flint water crisis. Her ethnographic teaching module "Learning to Listen" was distinguished by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) as an exemplary engineering ethics program.