BS, Arizona State University. MS, Columbia University. After receiving his masters degree in Columbia's narrative medicine program, de la Cruz lectured in the university's graduate program and assisted in developing training materials for its advance workshops. He has also lectured at CUNY School of Medicine as a faculty member with its Humanities in Medicine program. He has developed multiple HIV/AIDS prevention programs and sexual health-education programs for both healthcare institutions and nonprofit organizations, with an emphasis on at-risk youth groups. A founding editor of Intima, A Journal of Narrative Medicine, de la Cruz is also a contributing author of, The Uncharted Path From Clinic-Based to Community-Based Research. His current work involves exploring visual-, oral-, and performance-based narratives. SLC, 2018–
Graduate Courses 2023-2024
MA Health Advocacy
Illness and Disability Narratives
Graduate Seminar—Spring
The experience of illness and disability is both intimately personal and reflective of larger social, political, and cultural realities. To effectively work in direct patient care or broader scholarly or organizational arenas, a health advocate must be able to interpret and understand personal, communal, and institutional narratives. This course will introduce students to written, oral and visual narratives of illness and disability, narrative and cultural theory, methods for critical analysis of illness narratives, and media studies. Students will write their own illness or disability narratives during the course session, exploring issues such as selfhood, perspective and memory, representation, identity, family dynamics in health care and decision-making, and caregiving. Through in-depth analysis of the assigned texts, online discussions, student-led facilitation, in-person group work, and student presentations. Finally, students will elicit, transcribe, and interpret the oral narrative of an individual with a chronic illness or disability.