Fusion Lab

Art does not just decorate our spaces—it sharpens our observation, deepens our empathy, taps our capacity for awe, and reminds us of our shared humanity in medicine.

In 2023, the Center for Health Humanities and Ethics’s (CHHE) launched FusionLab, an interdisciplinary innovation incubator with an initial focus on developing projects inspired by the theme of Arts for Health and Human Flourishing. This initiative aims to bring together clinicians, artists, community partners, students, scholars, and scientists to:

• Bring the arts into health professions education and health care spaces
• Foster health and human flourishing
• Advance social justice through a disability justice framework
• Contribute new knowledge through research in these areas

November 2023: Inaugural Visit from Photographer Torrance York

The initiative’s inaugural event was a four-day visit from fine art photographer Torrance York, MFA. Diagnosed with Parkinson disease at age 50, York uses her photography to explore and make meaning of the diagnosis and its effects on her life and her connections with others.

During her visit, York presented three public events:

• A joint Medical Center Hour and Neurology Grand Rounds
• A community conversation at The Center at Belvedere
• A zine workshop at The Bridge Underground with Jess Walters, CHHE fellow-in-residence

She also met with students, trainees, and faculty in the Department of Neurology and at CHHE.

Accessible Arts Initiative

Due to physical, organizational, and social barriers, many people with disabilities are excluded from engaging in arts and culture spaces, participating in events or having opportunities to exhibit their own work. The Accessible Arts Initiative is a strategic plan developed in 2023 by then-CHHE Fellow In Residence, Jess Walters, to work with local organizations educating around principles of disability justice, evaluating barriers to access, and collaborating with stakeholders to improve accommodations and participation of disabled community members.

In 2024, Walters was invited to present at the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities annual conference in St. Louis, MO with their zine-making workshop, “Breaking Barriers to Belonging: A Disability Justice Framework to Using Zines as Tools To Facilitate Community in Isolation and Zine-Making as A Therapeutic Practice.” The same year, New City Arts was accepted into the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau’s inaugural “Tourism for All” cohort and Building Good Foundation’s C’ville Builds program. And, after 18 months of collaborative planning and generous donations of service and supplies from BRW Architects, Architectural Hardware Co., DMA Floors, Johnston & Co., Dunbar Structural, and the CHHE, New City Arts re-opened the gallery space in September 2025 with a newly renovated wheelchair-accessible bathroom.

In their role as Community Artist in Residence (CAIR, see below), Jess continues to research and develop strategies for implementing and advancing their initiative with other arts and cultural spaces in and around Charlottesville and UVA Grounds.

Summer 2024: Look+See: Bites of the Arts and Humanities:

For their Medical Student Summer Research Program (MSSRP) project, Hook Scholars Laura Liu and Louisa Post-Zweiker explored the Arts for Health and Human Flourishing theme. The result, Look+See: Bites of the Arts and Humanities, brought small works of art created by patients and clinicians into the everyday fabric of medical education.

Summer 2025: Social/Arts Prescribing Policy Resolution

In 2025, Hook Scholars Elianna Dunster, Zohar Ziff, and Tanvika Vegiraju combined their interest in patient advocacy with arts and social prescribing. Rather than writing a paper or building a standard lecture-based module, they led a group of medical students across Virginia on a policy resolution calling for the Medical Society of Virginia (MSV) “to support health institutions in the Commonwealth of Virginia in establishing social prescribing pilot programs and assessing their benefits, limitations, methods, and effectiveness.” The resolution passed by unanimous vote in November 2025.

This effort was accepted for presentation at the 2nd International Meeting of Arts Prescribing in Greece. Dr. Donna Chen and Hook Scholars Zohar Ziff and Elianna Dunster gave an oral presentation and presented two posters. They connected with attendees from across the globe who expressed interest in working with their own professional organizations to do the same. View the full conference agenda

Hook Scholar Final Project: The Healer’s Note

Hook Scholar Ruja Parikh (SMD26) created “The Healer’s Note”, an album of six original songs that she wrote, recorded, and published online in the Virginia Journal of Medicine. As Parikh explains, “[The Healer’s Note] explores the clinical experiences, grief, moral distress, and professional development she faced as a student in healthcare and attempts to demonstrate the capacity of songwriting and musical composition as a practical mode of narrative medicine. Each track is preceded by an explanation of the clinical encounter or experience that inspired it and followed by the lyrics to be read while listening.”

CHHE partnered with the Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC) Visual Arts Department, to present “Community Connections: Creative Pathways to Understanding.” This exhibition in the Dickinson Gallery at PVCC showcased diverse voices and perspectives with a multimedia collection of artworks made possible through the work of local organizations that offer creative access and artmaking spaces for all. Participating organizations included The Arc of the Piedmont, Innisfree Village, On Our Own, Bennett’s Village, Empowered Players, Nettle Shirt Puppet Works, Fusion Lab, and The Recovery Model Art Project.

“This exhibition is about more than art—it’s about building bridges and fostering understanding through creativity,” said PVCC Chairperson of Visual and Performing Arts Fenella Belle. “We’re thrilled to shine a spotlight on organizations that make art accessible to everyone, because when creativity is shared, communities thrive.”

The lead curators were Jess Walters, CHHE arts research fellow, and Daisy Dee, a 2025 UVA Studio Art graduate who completed an independent undergraduate research internship with CHHE in her final semester at UVA. Other members of the Curation Committee were Donna Chen, UVA CHHE; Fenella Belle, PVCC Chairperson of Visual and Performing Arts; and Sandra Bullins, Student Success Coach – Humanities, Fine Arts, and Social Sciences.

Benny the BIG Snake. Benny the BIG Snake is an interactive multimedia installation representing the Original Benny the Snake, which was constructed from rocks painted by community members visiting the Treehouse at Bennet’s Village.

On viewing the exhibition, Ray Williams MA EdM, internationally respected arts educator and Medical Center Hour speaker in February 2026, noted: “I was struck by the evident ethos of inclusion throughout the exhibition. The large snake sculpture mounted on the wall represented individual responses to a collaborative structure.  The work reminds us that there are tremendous creative opportunities for “variations on a theme.”  Particularly memorable are sections that rewarded touching with surprising textures—even sounds!”

Special thanks to all of the creatives who assisted in the making of Benny the BIG Snake’s body parts: The Scrappy Elephant, Chris McDaniel, Kim Helme, Joan Covatch, Dylan West, Stephen Haske, Donna Chen, Sandra Shifflett, Tori Cherry, Lindsay Leahy, Bess Renjilian, Seth Bolton, Daisy Dee, Jess Walters, and PVCC Geology Club volunteers: Evelyn See, Alice Black, Cannon Starnes, Louise Mather, Lucy Sams.

Opening night photos

Courtesy of Adam Barber, photographer for Arc Studio

Well-being programs for residents and health care practitioners

As an off-shoot of Clinician’s Eye, an art-museum based medical student educational program developed in 2013 in partnership with the Fralin Museum of Art, CHHE is partnering with UVA SOM clinical departments and residency programs to create arts-based well-being programs to help combat burn-out and build resiliency skills. In addition to partnering with the Fralin to create these, CHHE is in conversation with other art spaces interested in similar programming, including the Contemplative Sciences Center, Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, PVCC Dickinson Gallery, and New City Arts , among others.

In September 2026, CHHE faculty Marcia Day Childress and Donna Chen together with Fralin arts educators, Jordan Love and Emily Lazaro presented “Off-shoots of Clinician’s Eye: Growing Arts + Health Programming at the University of Virginia” at the Bridging Visual Arts & Healthcare: Impact, Innovation, Research symposium in Boston.

Community Artist in Residence Pilot and Graphic Medicine Initiative

In March 2026, Jess Walters (they/them), who had served as a CHHE Arts Research Fellow, helped CHHE develop and launch a pilot Community Artist in Residence program through the FusionLab. As a Fellow and the inaugural Community Artist in Residence, Walters, a multimedia artist collaborates with people around UVAHealth to bring zine-making into their spaces, as part of a larger Graphic Medicine initiative.

Walters has collaborated with Dr. Monique Dufour to bring zine-making for reflective practice in connecting with one’s work into UVA Faculty Writing Workshops and was invited to conduct a zine workshop for UVA’s Brain Immunology and Glia (BIG) Center Retreat.  Walters has collaborated with the Child Life Specialists to bring zine-kits to patients in the Children’s Hospital and has created educational zines for the Teen Clinic, the Fralin Art Museum, and advance care planning initiatives. They have conducted zine workshops for the Scholars Lab at Shannon Library, the Medical Student Disabilty Studies Club and is partnering with the UVA Health Sciences Library to introduce Graphic Medicine to UVAHealth including some joint offerings of zine workshops in the HSL Mill Space.

In July 2026, Walters, Monique Dufour, and Donna Chen presented at the annual conference of the International Graphic Medicine Consortium.

Read more: UVA Graphic Medicine Initiatives Featured at National Graphic Medicine Conference

Want to learn more about how comics are used in health care? Join CHHE community artist-in-residence Jess Walters, BCPA, to explore comics, graphic memoirs, zines, and other visual works, and discover the impact of engaging with and creating graphic medicine.

Participants will make their own mini-zine, and all supplies are provided. The workshop is hosted by the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library in collaboration with CHHE and can count toward SIM credit hours.

Location: Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, MILL (First Floor)