From the Chair

Kamna Balhara, MD, MA, FACEP

Dear MedHums members,

We are fresh off the heels of an invigorating and productive section meeting at ACEP26! I am very grateful to all who attended and shared their ideas, expertise, and insights. If you couldn't join us, please do take a look at the meeting minutes to catch all the latest updates.

I am particularly thrilled that we now have a formal resolution from ACEP that recognizes the importance of the arts and humanities in emergency medicine! The formal language for the adopted resolution is: “Amended Resolution 17(26) Importance of the Arts and Humanities as Applied to Emergency Medicine. RESOLVED, That ACEP recognize the importance and relevance of the arts and humanities to emergency medicine.” 

This is a major step for our section, and will hopefully serve as a document that each of us could use when seeking organizational or departmental buy-in for arts- and humanities-based initiatives in our educational or practice settings. Thank you to our wonderful councilor and alternate councilor, Drs. Birnbaumer and Kowalsky, for representing our section so ably! 

We now have a draft of the consensus paper on the importance of humanities in emergency medicine that is open for comment from the section. Please see the minutes for the link. Please share your thoughts no later than November 15, 2026. Feel free to email me with your feedback. We also hope you'll join us on November 11 for the first section webinar of the year! We'd love to continue to use the webinar format to feature your work and expertise, so please do let us know if you're interested in hosting a webinar.

We're on a roll, so let's keep the momentum going! It is exciting to collaborate with each of you to bring the beauty of the arts and humanities to emergency medicine.  We need dialogue, creativity, and openness to new perspectives more than ever - and the works from our visual art, prose, and poetry award winners are a testament to the power of the arts and humanities in sustaining the skills, attributes, and attitudes that define the very best of emergency medicine.