Health Humanities

If there is anything the global experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic have revealed, it is that human health is shaped by and depends on cultural practices and values. Although health is often equated with biomedicine and assumed to be the focus of research exclusively in the medical and sometimes behavioral sciences, it cannot be adequately understood or supported without attention to the narratives, values and cultural products and institutions that human communities create and uphold. These building blocks of cultures of health are the focus of the humanities and the qualitative social sciences, and human flourishing greatly depends on them.

Health Humanities works to promote research and interdisciplinary collaborations — between the university, community networks, and clinical partners — that address health as a cultural idea, value and practice. Its fundamental mission is to guide and support public discussions about health equity, justice, and access, and to explore creative cultural approaches to promoting care for all.

Scholars, professionals, artists and activists working with Health Humanities bring their expertise to analyzing various cultural forces:

• the stories told about illness, mortality, and the body;

• the ethics of care and wellbeing;

• the politics of representation and distribution of health resources;

• the way history generates and informs current structures of healthcare and the clinic;

• and the myriad ways stigmas, stereotypes and language or cultural difference influence and can undermine access to medical resources and just systems of care.

Health Humanities includes researchers working in the established fields of narrative medicine, bioethics, philosophy of science, biocultural studies, history of medicine, translation studies, and disability studies. In concert with those studying embodiment, particularly in scholarly communities addressing race, class, gender, and sexuality, it also seeks to develop research capacity in these fields. It also supports those who are focused on reforming healthcare training and practice and working to promote structural awareness, diversity and cultural humility in the health professions.

We currently organize and sponsor events to build research capacity and public engagement with the field and offer an interdisciplinary undergraduate certificate in Health Humanities that is available for students pursuing any major at ASU, with more curricular programs in development.