Lise ​Saffran, MPH, MFA

Biography

A graduate of the Gillings School of Global Public Health (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Lise Saffran’s research and teaching focus on how narrative enhances public health practice, including communicating scientific information in politicized environments. Her work has been published in a wide variety of outlets, including The Lancet, Academic Medicine, Medical Humanities, Arts & Health, PLOS ONE, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and elsewhere. Her international presentations include a webinar on public health storytelling for the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (January 2024) and a keynote roundtable presentation at the University of Southern Denmark’s conference, “Research at the Intersection of Public Health and the Humanities” (September 2024).

Her creative nonfiction has been published in Poets and Writers, Electric Literature and elsewhere, and she is the author of the novel Juno’s Daughters (Penguin/Plume 2011).

Research Interests

• Public Health Storytelling
• Imagination and Ethics
• Narrative theory and craft

Education

• MFA – Iowa Writers' Workshop
  University of Iowa, 1998
• MPH – Maternal and Child Health
  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1990
• BA – International Studies
  University of Oregon, Eugene, 1987

Publications

• Google Scholar

Courses Taught

• • 2024–present | PBHLTH 290C
  • Community Engagement Through Storytelling
• • 2026; planned 2027 | PBHLTH 292
  • Storytelling with Data
  • RHI Capstone
• • Summer 2026 | PBHLTH 15
  • Introduction to Public Health
  • Evidence, Communication and Policy