DAY 2 KEYNOTE

Lita Wills serves as the Commissioner of Health Equity and Social Justice at the Cleveland Department of Public Health. Ms.Wills is a twenty-plus year veteran in the fields of community health, prevention and education. A Cleveland native, she began her professional career at The Free Clinic of Greater Cleveland, leading HIV prevention, testing and outreach. From there she served as the RSB Supervisor for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, implementing groundbreaking K-12 comprehensive sexuality and prevention education. She spent seven years as the Executive Director of the Mahoning Valley College Access Program serving first-generation college students in Warren and Youngstown. She also served as the Director of Community Impact at The United Way of Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley guiding community investments to more than 40 partner organizations, leading COVID-19 Emergency Response Funding, and crafting internal and external Diversity Equity and Inclusion plans. A 2009 Robert Wood Johnson Ladder to Leadership Fellow, she holds a B.A. from Cleveland State University and a Master of Public Health Degree from the Consortium of Eastern Ohio/ Kent State University MPH program.

DAY 3 KEYNOTE

Susan Magsamen is the founder and executive director of the International Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab), Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics, a pioneering neuroaesthetics initiative from the Pedersen Brain Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Susan’s work focuses on how the arts and aesthetic experiences measurably change the brain, body and behavior and how this knowledge can be translated to inform health, wellbeing and learning programs in medicine, public health and education.

She is also the author of the Impact Thinking, an interdisciplinary translational research model to enhance human potential through the use of arts and aesthetics. This model is a generative framework that applies a new scientific method to arts and aesthetics research and, at the same time, considers how the research can be scaled, disseminated and evaluated for impact. In addition to her role at IAM Lab, she is the co-director of the NeuroArts Blueprint project in partnership with the Aspen Institute. The Blueprint aims to create the field of Neuroarts where arts and aesthetics are mainstream in medicine and public health. Magsamen is also the co-author of the New York Times Bestseller, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us written for the general public.

This fall, we set the stage for arts in health at NOAHCON ’23. The in-person days took place at Cleveland Play House in the Playhouse Square neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio, and the virtual day was held on Zoom.
NOAH conferences inform and educate participants on current and emerging topics in the field, highlight best practices and exemplary programs, and connect an ever-expanding community to inspire conversation, collaboration + innovation.

The focus areas were:
Equity, access, and belonging; Fundraising and marketing; Cultural humility, competency, and understanding; Community and public health; Research and evaluation; Professionalization; Caring for caregivers; Advocacy; Innovation; Collaboration and partnerships; Mental health and wellbeing.

Recordings are available to all conference registrants until January 4th, 2024.
Access the recordings via the agenda in Whova.

NOAH’s annual conference is created for artists, arts administrators, healthcare professionals, designers, educators, students, and anyone with an interest in arts in health.

*photo of Playhouse Square from Playhouse Square’s Facebook page

NOAH is proud to have partnered with the following organizations for this year’s conference:

“This was my first NOAH conference, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! It was so nice to be in the midst of so many people who ‘get it.’ I was so inspired by the passionate presenters and the meaningful, impact work that is being done. I felt hopeful when I left the conference.”

More testimonials

“Loved it! …a beautiful job bringing people together to share their gifts and what they are doing and proving art does in fact heal!”

“The conference was so inviting and engaging! It is clear that you thought through so many details and curated something that would matter in some way to each conference goer!”