Julia Serat, FBCA, has been actively involved with the BCA for over twenty-five years, serving in a variety of capacities, including on the Board of Governors, as a Chapter Delegate and on the EFFE Committee. She has helped to coordinate the Shriners Photography Group at BIOCOMM, actively participated in meetings and widely promoted the Association. She has presented multiple papers and contributed articles for resources on the BCA website.

Julia is a skilled photographer and has won many awards for her images in BioImages, within the International Shriners organization, Children’s Hospital Association and elsewhere. She shows a compassion for her subjects and technical expertise with her photographs. She is willing to share this expertise with fellow professionals and people with less photographic knowledge. One example is the training she developed to teach allied health professionals about wound photography to improve technique and consistency.

BCA Contributions
Julia has been a mainstay at BIOCOMM, and has been honored many times in BioImages, including the Award of Excellence, the Medical Education Award and the Certificate of Merit, all for Still Media. Her Award of Excellence portrait entry in BioImages 2019 was also awarded the Best of Show in the professional division at the Yolo County Fair. Julia also has an article on Wound Photography Tips in “Tips & Techniques” on the BCA website.

Publications
Julia regularly has images published in support of Shriners Hospital functions, operations, and public relations. One of the corporate Shrine magazines is called Leaders in Care. Also, her clinical images are routinely used by physicians and medical staff during their conferences and presentations, and to illustrate journal publications and textbooks. Julia has also been written up in her local Woodland paper and the regional Sacramento paper on numerous occasions for her work. She partnered with Shriners’ pediatric physical therapists to provide clinical photographs on functional mobility for a new educational app soon to be released.

Children’s Hospitals Photo Exhibit
Julia is highly valued and respected by her peers throughout the Shriner’s organization and within the BCA. Her commitment to the values of professional skills, service and education exemplifies the foundations of the BioCommunications Association. She has been featured at least a dozen times in the biannual Children’s Hospitals Photo Exhibit, “celebrating children’s hospitals’ commitment to the health of all children through family-centered clinical care, highly-trained pediatricians, revolutionary research and community health programs.” In 2019 the judges selected 50 images out of 370 submitted, according to the press release. “Images comprising the exhibit are featured at conferences, in publications, and on Capitol Hill.” In the 2019-2020 Children’s Hospitals Photo Exhibit, Julia’s photo of two formerly conjoined twins is one of the 50 featured. Here is the link: https://www.childrenshospitals.org/Newsroom/Photo-Exhibit.

Education
Julia received a B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley and continued her photographic training at both Hawkeye Institute of Technology, Iowa, and the Industrial/Scientific Photography Program at Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California.