Rachel Dungan

I've been working at the intersection of three different fields for about 15 years. I always had a social justice orientation and wanted to do something that helps people. In college, I studied music and the arts separately from neuroscience and public health, and was interested in connecting the dots between those two worlds. There's a new field emerging focused on the ways music and the arts can measurably help improve people's health outcomes, and telling the story of that field has become very important to me. I went to graduate school and got a master's degree in social policy because I wanted to be a leader and changemaker in helping to shape policies that help make sure people get access to the healthcare they need, including interventions that use music and the arts to promote healing. From there, I worked with UN Women, an NIH-funded health tech company, hosted a podcast, and consulted for various nonprofits and businesses. I spent the last 10 years working as a director at a think tank focused on health research and patient engagement in health research, helping to make strategic decisions, build strategic relationships, lead and manage teams, and consult organizational leadership on key strategic directions. I built cross-sector partnerships connecting the dots between folks working in nonprofit, private sector, and government spaces. Along the way, I developed a vision impairment, which led me into personal advocacy and patient advocacy in the vision and health research communities, and working directly with policymakers. Now I'm on the faculty at two different universities teaching skill sets and strategies in this new field called neuroarts that brings together the health research side and the arts side. I do curriculum design and offer trainings for everyone from high school students all the way up through expert professionals in the field. I bring the lived experience of having had a vision impairment and how that has impacted my experience navigating the healthcare system, and now I help make sure other people can navigate the healthcare system in ways that best serve them.