Witnessing Medical Harm: A Testimony-Based Education
Our Team
We are a team of medical students from Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences, working under the mentorship of Dr. Matt Vassar and in partnership with The Witnessing Project Foundation, an Oklahoma nonprofit dedicated to collecting, preserving, and presenting testimony about medical harm through participatory art, community dialogue, and educational programming. The Vassar Research Team has trained over 200 medical students in evidence-based research, with a mission to make medicine better by listening to the people it has failed.
The Project
This summer, eight OSU medical students will travel to Nevada's Black Rock Desert to collect testimony about witnessed medical harm — from patients, providers, and bystanders — as part of a large-scale participatory installation documenting how harm in healthcare is experienced, remembered, and carried. This field research contributes directly to the Witness Wall, a 70-foot circular fabric installation bearing hand-stitched testimony panels that transform lived experience into a living archive and sacred space for grief, witness, and collective memory.
Why Medicine Needs This
Medical harm is rarely spoken about openly. Patients carry it silently. Providers carry it alone. The people who witness it, family members, bystanders, colleagues, often have nowhere to put it. This project creates that space. By collecting testimony across one of the most diverse and open communities in North America, we are building an archive that will inform medical education, institutional accountability, and community healing for years to come. Structural elements of the installation will become ash used to plant native trees at historical trauma sites. Fabric testimonies will be preserved for medical school tours.
Be Part of It
Your contribution funds the direct costs of this field research — transportation, accommodations, research materials, and student stipends for a week of intensive testimony collection. You are not just funding a trip. You are funding the training of future physicians who will enter practice having sat with the weight of what patients and families carry — and who will be better doctors because of it.
Learn more about Dr. Vassar and his research team at our website!
Visit the Witness Project to learn how this project will impact healthcare!
$10
Onset
A donation at this level contributes to the foundational materials of the project: the threads, fabric, and supplies that make the Witness Wall possible.
$25
Location
This contribution helps cover the cost of testimony collection materials — the tools our students use to document, record, and preserve the stories they gather in the field.
$50
Duration
A donation at this level helps feed and sustain a student researcher for a day in one of the most demanding field environments in North America.
$100
Character
This contribution covers a meaningful portion of a single student's field research expenses — helping ensure that cost is never a barrier to participation.
$500
Aggravating Factors
A donation at this level covers the full travel costs for one student researcher making the journey from Tulsa to Nevada's Black Rock Desert and back.
$1,000
Relieving Factors
This contribution covers the complete cost of one student's participation in the project — travel, accommodations, and field research expenses for the full week.
$3,000
Timing
A donation at this level funds the accommodations for the entire team — providing a base of operations in the desert where testimony is collected, preserved, and protected.
$7,000
Severity
This contribution covers the full travel and accommodations for all eight student researchers — ensuring the team arrives, operates, and returns safely from one of the most unique research environments in the world.