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August 10 , 2004

David B. Larson Fellows are Named at Library of Congress

Juliet Bruce and Lynn G. Underwood Are the First Recipients

Juliet Bruce of Washington, D.C., and Lynn Underwood of Kalamazoo, Mich., have been named as the first recipients of the David B. Larson Fellowship in Health and Spirituality at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.

The fellowship was established earlier this year at the Library with a $2.5 million gift from the board of directors of the International Center for the Integration of Health and Spirituality (ICIHS). It honors the late Dr. David B. Larson, an epidemiologist and psychiatrist and the president and founder of ICIHS, whose purpose was to focus on potentially relevant but understudied factors that might help in prevention of, coping with or recovering from illness.

Recipients of the Larson Fellowship will continue to work on cutting-edge initiatives that involve issues of health and spirituality.

Bruce, who begins her fellowship in September, plans to continue work on a book she is writing on the theory and practice of creative self-expression for healing. Founder and executive director of the Institute for Transformation Through the Arts in Washington, she received her doctorate from the University of Hawaii International University for Professional Studies, where she examined the spiritual, psychological, developmental and neurobiological aspects of violence and creativity, as well as the impact of a spiritually based storytelling and writing program for violent offenders. The author of numerous articles and the recipient of several grants and fellowships in her field, Bruce is called on frequently to lead arts-for-healing workshops.

Underwood was vice president for health research at the Fetzer Institute in Kalamazoo, and she is on the faculty of Lee Honors College at Western Michigan University. She received her doctorate from Queens University School of Medicine in England, has co-edited two methodology textbooks, "Measuring Stress" (1995) and "Social Support Measurement and Intervention" (2000), and she has led workshops on the bio-behavioral aspects of pain, spirituality and aging, and on end-of-life issues. The goal of Underwood's project, which she will begin in March 2005, is to write a resource book to help persons with disabilities or chronic diseases and those caring for them, in both health care settings and at home.

The selection of the fellows was made by a committee composed of Christopher G. Ellison, Elsie and Stanley E. Adams Sr. Centennial Professor in Liberal Arts, University of Texas; Gary R. Gunderson, director of the Interfaith Health Program, Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University; and Gail H. Ironson, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Miami.

Through a generous endowment from John W. Kluge, the Library of Congress established the Kluge Center in 2000 to bring together the world's best thinkers to distill wisdom from the Library's rich resources and to stimulate and energize interaction with policymakers in Washington. The Kluge Center houses five senior Kluge Chairs, other senior-level chairs and nearly 25 postdoctoral fellows.

For more information about the Larson Fellowship or any of the fellowships and programs offered by the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, visit the center's Web site at www.loc.gov/kluge.

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PR 04-143
08/010 /04
ISSN 0731-3527

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