Meet Duke HuMed's Spring '23 Guest Speaker and HuMed President

Duke English would like to present you with this opportunity to get to know English alum Dr. Jocelyn Streid, who will present at Duke Humanities in Medicine's "Celebrating Medicine, Literature, and Religion” on Saturday, April 15, 2023, and current Duke HuMed (Humanities in Medicine) president, Rebecca Arian, '26, who plans to double major in English and Neuroscience.

Dr. Jocelyn Streid, '13, Harvard Resident

Dr. Streid is a native of St. Louis, MO. She graduated from Duke in 2013, where she was an English major, a Robertson scholar, a student preacher, and a proud member of RoundTable. After graduation, she spent a year conducting pediatric end-of-life care research in Malaysia as a Hart Fellow. She then returned to Durham for a year with the Duke Chapel Pathways Program, where she worked at the Resource Center for Women & Ministry in the South. Afterward, she obtained her MD at Harvard Medical School and her Masters in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School as a Dubin Fellow. She is currently a third-year anesthesia resident at Harvard's Brigham & Women's Hospital and incoming Chief Resident for 2023-2024. Her academic work involves shared decision-making, serious illness communication, and goal concordance among surgical patients.

As an undergrad, you studied abroad in India, China, and South Africa; which was the most meaningful in your undergraduate global health experience?

"When I spent a summer at a rural South African hospital, I was with a young boy as he died. He had arrived the night before with a systemic infection, and by morning, he was rapidly decompensating. Despite the team's best efforts, they could neither halt his disease process nor control his symptoms. The boy died, afraid and in pain. His death was a tragedy, but the way he died was an injustice. I think of him often. He taught me that poverty changes not just how people live but also how people die. Pain control, hospice access, end-of-life counseling, and caregiver support programs - disparities prevail across all these realms." 

What is the most powerful way your Duke English major experience shaped your post-graduate Global Health work?

"I am forever grateful to my thesis advisor Priscilla Wald, my major advisor Thomas Ferraro, and my mentors in the English department. They taught me how to read not only traditional texts but also the cultural narratives all around us. They taught me how to read closely, carefully, and with an eye for paradox, play, and beauty. The hospital is full of stories. There are the stories patients and clinicians tell each other and the larger stories of health, disease, and death that our society tells all of us. If I can listen out for these stories, and pay close attention to their cadences, characters, and plot twists, then I will be a better doctor."

Considering you pursued an MD/MPP at Harvard after Duke, how do you see global health and/or public policy fitting into your post-residency life?

"Some of the pathologies my patients suffer from are diseases of the body: cancer corrupting their cells, the arrhythmias interrupting their hearts. But many of the pathologies are social: poverty, homelessness, institutional racism, structural inequality, and medical expenses beyond their reach. These systemic pathologies write on my patients' bodies and manifest themselves in delayed care, preventable illness, and loss of dignity amid sickness and suffering. We do what we can as clinicians, but we also need to do what we can as policymakers, advocates, activists, and change-makers. My interests include palliative care, shared decision-making, and severe illness communication. End-of-life outcomes are shaped by socioeconomic, cultural, and governmental forces inside and outside the hospital. To reimagine the systems of care we deliver to our sickest patients, I need to lean on the skillsets I learned, the people I met in medical school, and my global health and public policy training". 

Rebecca Arian, '26, HuMed President

I plan to double major in Neuroscience and English. While I ultimately hope to pursue a Ph.D. and a research career, I've always placed myself at the intersection of literature and natural sciences. I come from a family of writers and grew up considering Alan Lightman, a novelist, essayist, and physicist, as my role model. He was the first person to receive dual faculty appointments in science and the humanities at MIT, and he proved to me that I didn't need to pick between fields of study; instead, I could combine them. Literature serves as an entrance into the worlds in which both authors and readers live. I plan to use my degree in English to enhance my understanding of Neuroscience and the human mind and further understand the basis of communication and connection.

Why do you want to be part of Duke HuMed Celebrations? 

"This event immediately piqued my curiosity because of my academic interests and personal experiences. I attended parochial school from kindergarten through twelfth grade and was immersed in theological studies my entire life. I speak Hebrew, am familiar with biblical texts, and am interested in examining the connection between that area of my life and my field of scientific study. I also grew up with end-of-life issues front and center in my family life, as my older sister received a double lung transplant when I was seven years old. Although perhaps I didn't fully understand the magnitude of this process at such a young age, I was keenly aware throughout my childhood of what her cystic fibrosis and rapid decline meant, what death was, and how near it has been to her. Lastly, literature has long been of high value to me. Among my favorite writers are Proust, Wilde, and Rilke. Because my mom is both a writer and a chef specializing in health-supportive cooking—she received part of her culinary training at a cancer clinic in Switzerland—I grew up in a home with a whole bookshelf devoted to end-of-life literature."

If you could ask Dr. Streid about her experiences, what would you ask and why?

"Our American medical system spends untold money, time, and intellectual curiosity on overcoming death, yet we remain culturally unwilling to talk about dying. Instead, we continue relying on life-extending technologies, even with little promise of quality of life on the other side. At what point in your studies did you become aware of this paradox? From your vantage point, do you believe the single-minded pursuit of life extension is a manifestation of American exceptionalism? Can you reflect on the last century and find and identify the moment of shift?"

 Spring, '23 “Celebrating Medicine, Literature, and Religion”
Featuring Dr. Jocelyn Streid
Saturday, April 15, 2023
250 Ahmadieh Family Gallery - Gross Hall
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Register to Attend