Health Humanities

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Reflecting the university’s mission of awakening, nuturing, and empowering learners to ethical lives of service and leadership, the Health Humanities program cultivates a broad understanding of health and promotes ethical approaches to health care. The program prepares students to pursue careers in health-related fields and to navigate healthcare systems and structures in their own and others’ lives.

The major and minor in Health Humanities emphasize that health is a complex and interrelated set of concerns and that patients, caregivers, and health care practitioners are whole persons whose physiological, psychological, and spiritual needs require a holistic understanding. In keeping with a Lasallian emphasis on practically and humanely meeting the needs of all, and emphasizing the dignity of the human person, the Health Humanities program advocates for social justice, compassionate care, and professional practice directed toward the common good.

Health Humanities Goals

The Health Humanities curriculum is designed to help students:

• Examine systems, contexts, and narratives (e.g., ethical, theological, and biosocial) that shape decisions and policies regarding health and health care.

• Integrate the methods and perspectives of humanistic disciplines to critique competing conceptions of health.

• Analyze health-focused narratives and experiences from multiple perspectives (e.g., patient, caregiver, provider, practitioner).

• Develop skills and dispositions critical to ethical, whole person care reflective of the Lasallian charism, such as discernment, sympathy and empathy, and self-reflection.

• Demonstrate awareness of rhetorical situation, genre, audience, purpose, and context; integrate primary and secondary research; and communicate effectively with a primarily public audience.

Programs

• Health Humanities Major; B.A.

• Health Humanities Minor

Return to: Undergraduate Departments and Programs