AghamArte Program: Art Education for Family Medicine Doctors

We are helping to  solve some of the long-term causes of Philippine underdevelopment, namely, extreme poverty and inequity in health systems. In light of the radical turn of events surrounding COVID-19, the AghamArte Program (AA Program) seeks to improve and enhance the administration of Primary Healthcare in the country & the maximal application of the Universal Healthcare Act (UHC Act), assisting more acutely the poorest Filipinos especially in the remotest parts of the country. Since Family and Community Medicine doctors are the frontliners of both Primary Healthcare and the UHC, the AA program has made them the priority beneficiaries. 

In the Philippines, support for Family and Community medicine, as a field of concentration, has always been feeble. Usually mistaken for General Practice, the specialization fails to attract young Filipino medical students. Even with the admirable advocacy for the marginalized, i.e. pro-poor and pro-people,  the specialty’s prevalent lack of stature in the country and meager remuneration discourage student doctors to heed the noble call.  It is said that most medical students are equipped with outdated knowledge and skills by the time they graduate and are unable to grasp the big picture connections of a VUCA world - volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. “Overspecialization has limited their capacity for integrative, lateral and holistic thinking. Medicine turned its back on the medical art and the thousands of years of humanistic approaches to concentrate on medical practice cross-culturally.”

The AghamArte Program will actively help build trust and engagement between historically underserved communities and their health systems. The Filipino Family Physician creates improved situations particularly for the marginalized & promotes a so-called regenerative culture that is inclusive. 

As reiterated by Dr. Lani Nicodemus of the Philippine General Hospital, Family and Community Medicine is what the Philippines needs in terms of addressing most of the poor health conditions that beset the country. Most of the nation’s health problems are preventable & will be less costly, if only the family can be more involved in the psycho-social dynamics of the sick family member. Family and Community Medicine is at the core of the notion that a patient belongs to a family and, that family in question, has culture, values and beliefs. This is essentially what physicians consider. If doctors are better able to manage the workings of the family unit – with the family as main ally- the country will be able to manage the majority of the medical problems that Filipinos predominantly contend with - hypertension, heart disease, diabetes and until recently, Covid19.

The AghamArte (AA) Program, anchored on Discipline-Based Art Education, is a series of Art-Science classes for Medical Professionals. The AA program trains doctors in multidisciplinary thinking, culture-sensitive design, human-centric innovation and global citizenship, providing them with a distinct “high-touch” delivery of health-care which goes beyond technical efficiency and “cold” medical administration especially given to the underserved. 

Being frontliners of the Universal Health Care and burdened by the endless and multifarious constraints of a problematic public health system, Family and Community Medicine doctors in the Philippines must perform their roles with an ever-heightened creativity (innovative) & purpose (human-centric). Perennially pushed to the limit, Filipino physicians ingeniously need to invent ways (close to performing magic!) to effectively accomplish their roles and deliver equitable health care to all. 

The AghamArte (AA) Program, Art-Science Thinking for Medical Professionals, aims to upgrade the soft-skills, artistic and creative thinking skills and whole-brain thinking of family physicians. Moreover, the AA Program helps to instill in doctors the Filipino culture of care for the sick or “paglingap”, training them in an enriched way of delivering care. AA is science-informed care complimented by the (cultural) imperatives of a person-oriented culture. Science’s therapeutic power is irrefutable but argued herein are other aspects of medical care that promises greater wellness: culture-based & devoted care.

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The AgahamArte Program promotes stronger support  for Family and Community Medicine in the country. Filipino physicians have brought prestige, quietly but profoundly, to the local as well as the global medical industry.  How good would other medical innovations be, with their promising design-business-technology outputs, if they don’t help solve the country’s more immediate concerns such as health care, poverty alleviation & Filipino values preservation? As Arthur Kleinman M.D. advocates: medical education should empower practitioners not just to identify the problems but to attempt to resist & correct them. At the level of leadership & at the level of the ordinary practitioner, the profession needs to reclaim and revivify the art of healing, clinical experience, and caregiving as fundamental to the profession.

By far, the AghamArte Program is the only one of its kind in the Philippines. Authored by Corinne Romabiles, PhD, the AghamArte program, also called Art Education for STEAM (science, tech, engineering, agriculture, math and medicine) Professionals is based on Romabiles’ dissertation titled “Paglingap (Filipino culture of care for the sick) as Transformative Innovation: The Practice of Family Medicine in the Philippines. 

Behind the study is a 10-year experience in teaching the Humanities & a Communication Arts course to undergraduates in Engineering & the Sciences. A triad mix of Design– Business -Technology concepts, the said Communication Arts course aims to help ease the country’s “Global Achievement Gap” (Wagner, 2012). Indeed, how can cultural studies cultivate the mental processes of future problem-solvers, inventors and leaders who will save the world from a purported “apocalyptic” tomorrow? How can the global crisis in human health, as well as the deterioration of the natural environment, be mended before they worsen to a most catastrophic degree?  In the light of the radical turn of events surrounding COVID19, the study aims to secure its spot in discourses focused on care. There is a call for better care giving – in health care, environmental care, child-care, and elderly care, to name a few. The study hopes to impart knowledge about how to care in a more humane way – generous, warm, sincere & devoted. 

As never before, Filipinos are recognized & lauded for their care-giving talent. Aspiring to live in a greener, healthier & kinder world, people want to learn more from care-giving cultures. How can we be free from the unpredictable menaces of global warming, incurable diseases or radical extremism? To explore Filipino care, the research describes how Filipino Family Medicine doctors are advocating a so-called “culture-sensitive design” in their work of easing esp. the deprived conditions of the poverty stricken. 

We joined the Solve Challenge to find  support for the plight of Family and Community Medicine doctors, who  were declared by the UN, as the front-liners of medical service through the Universal  Health Care. We also seek support for the invaluable role of Psycho-Social Dynamics research in the country as it has proven advantageous for resource poor patients, particularly, in the work of physicians as counselors. In all, the 5 Roles of the Family Physician are partial to the health care problems  of the marginalized & dysfunctional families in Philippine society. 

Current statistics reveal that there are countless domestic complications the poverty-stricken Filipino family is faced with. Mainly due to political corruption, Filipinos have borne the brunt of rescuing the country from numerous economic downfalls & decades of political mismanagement. Filipino families suffer the most as countless are forced to work abroad to financially subsist. Fathers or mothers or both are painfully separated from their brood to the detriment of their spousal relations, parenting/child rearing & over-all family bond. 

The AghamArte program aims to strengthen the often-ignored potential of Family Medicine specialization. Corollary to the discourse is the international recognition of Filipino ingenuity in the health services that can be attributed to the Filipino value of Paglingap. 

The AghamArte (Art-Science) program or Discipline-based Art Education for STEAM (science, technology, engineering, agriculture and medicine) professionals was crafted by Corinne Romabiles in 2017. It is the first of its kind in the Philippines. 

The program is particularly focused on training for interdisciplinarity to complement in-depth knowledge or specialized thinking. AA lessons, tasks & ideation sessions are constructed to enhance STEAM expertise. To achieve interdisciplinary or symphonic thinking as well as to cultivate the core non-cognitive skills, the program proposes to engage the participants in the Humanities or the Major Arts. Inspired by the rigors of social science research, the course aims to involve students in doing design that is said to be a “Renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need & beauty to produce something that the world didn’t know it was missing. Design is intelligence made visible”. (P. Antonelli) Program activities will assist students to articulate their own “design philosophy” to innovate outputs around global megatrends & projects related to major platforms advocated by the United Nations. 

The program trains students in the fundamentals of art/design appreciation: describing, analyzing, interpreting & judging artistic masterpieces so they in turn will learn how “to fascinate” with their own unique way of managing “formal relations”. Echoing Roger Fry, in art-making, one learns how to masterfully command unpredictable forces, skillfully guiding diverse elements to the inevitable, that is, towards the preordained integrality of the beautiful.        

Among 21st century ideals to be instilled in the program include cultural intelligence & cultural diplomacy, high-concept & high-touch abilities, the 7 Da Vincian principles (Gelb), the 6 senses (Pink) and the soft-skills & non-cognitive skills for strategic intelligence. 

The AghamArte group will focus on developing the program and broadening its reach. Currently, we are getting inquiries and gaining interested parties from hospitals, universities and other educational organizations with medical colleges -all over the Philippines. This April 2022, the program will be implemented in one of the biggest public educational institutions in the Philippines - West Visayas State University (WVSU)- located in the Visayas, Philippines. WVSU is interested in partnering with AghamArte so the program can be offered, not only in the Visayas, but also in Mindanao. Our 5 year vision is to become a prolific, all-inclusive leading solution, known for helping Family and Community Medicine doctors perform their roles with an ever-heightened creativity (innovative) & purpose (human-centric), thus contributing to the improvement and enhancement of the administration of Primary Healthcare in the country.

Every quarter, AghamArte will measure the enrollment numbers and identify partner institutions . AghamArte targets a gradual increase in the number of Family and Community medicine doctors reached. AghamArte’s progress will be reflected in a quarterly report. The number of possible new AA sites or satellites all over the Philippines will also be monitored. The amount of funding received will be tracked to examine whether the program meets the targeted goals financial requirements to reach its expansion targets.

Paglingap, rooted in the concept of Kapwa  (one’s neighbor or the person next to you) of the Pamantayan (the Value System of Filipinos) defines & distinguishes the practice of Family and Community Medicine in the Philippines. Paglingap is the essence of Family and Community Medicine in the country. Paglingap is care & compassion among Filipinos that particularly answers the needs of the sick (ang may karamdaman) and as foremost Filipino Family Medicine doctor Allan Dionisio had said: it is this peculiar care and compassion that drives Filipino Family and Community Medicine.

Paglingap, the Filipino culture of care for the sick, is innovation that is transformative. Filipino care not only advances Family Medicine in the Philippines but also ushers in a more humane future for global health care: patient-centered, family-focused & community-oriented. Transformative innovation, as theory of change, works towards a ‘meaningful & sustainable world’ through continuous exploration of the most appropriate responses to the drastically changing socio-ecological conditions. Innovation that promotes inclusivity & growth is crucial to a rapidly metamorphosing world. Transformative innovation can deliver a fundamental shift towards new patterns of viability in tune with the Philippines’ aspirations for the future. (International Futures Forum)

The program mainly focuses and prioritizes the most efficient use of technology around the so-called Five-Star Roles and Responsibilities of Physicians mandated by the World Health Organization and now espoused by the Philippine Academy of Family Physicians and other groups. The Five-Star Roles & Responsibilities include: Health Care Provider, Educator/Teacher, Counselor, Researcher/Lifelong Learner and Social Mobilizer/Manager.

Filipino care, is an extensive driver of growth as evidenced by the work of Family Physicians in a country like the Philippines with multifarious challenges in the Health Care System. The efforts of doctors in practicing the 5 Star Roles: 1) as science researcher, improving Psycho-Social Dynamic assessment tools like the SCREEM and APGAR  so they cater more to less educated Filipinos  2) as counselor, engaged in “deep listening” 3) as social advocate, respecting the dynamic patterns of relationships and the emerging integrity that relationships bring about  4) as educator, facilitating and expanding what is considered to be valid knowledge and therefore the context of learning   5) as manager, who creatively organizes cultural dialogues, big or small, utilizing Filipino Psycho-Socio Dynamics for health assessment — are all at the very core of AghamArte’s primary use technology. AghamArte is powered by a great desire to support Filipino Family and Community doctors basically through Art-Science education .  

Currently, the 5 members of the team are all Filipinos. The team is composed of three women and two men. The team comes from diverse specializations: arts and culture, communication, technology, law and medicine. The team adheres to human-centered innovation and are passionately driven to provide solutions in addressing underdevelopment, namely, extreme poverty and inequity in health systems. 

AghamArte works hard to provide Family and Community medicine doctors the necessary knowledge and skills to solve the most intractable problems faced by  an ill-equipped healthcare system. With sufficient financial support, AghamArte is prepared to implement the program in other countries challenged by a similar underdeveloped health system. 

In our business model, individual participants, groups, universities and other educational organizations are required to pay fees to avail of the AghamArte training program and its consultancy services. The AA hopes to reach as many public and private healthcare institutions, medical colleges of state universities, as well as private and public hospitals. 

Currently, all funding is provided by the founder. Fees for training services from private schools and subsidized public schools can bring enough revenue to cover the  operating costs. Our plan is to scale up the business and set up satellite offices all over the country. Next year, we plan to establish an AghamArte center in West Visayas State University located in the Visayas, the 2nd largest region  in the Philippines. This will widen the client base of AghamArte and bring in more partners that will support the program.

After AghamArte’s pilot implementation in Mapúa University, Manila, it was then adapted by the Asian Institute of Management (AIM). Currently, over 65 STEAM professionals, including doctors and health workers, are enrolled in Professor Corinne Romabiles’ Art-Science course offered  in the MS Innovation and Business program at  the AIM. This April 2022, AA’s  expansion in the Visayas region commences at the West Visayas State University. Numerous universities and educational organizations had shown great interest in AA . De La Salle University, the University of the Philippines and other known educational institutions in the country have contacted the AA group and expressed their interest in the program.