印第安納大學與普渡大學印第安納波里斯聯(lián)合分校

The Medical Humanities and Health Studies Program offer an interdisciplinary curriculum to prepare undergraduates to understand the broader role and determinants of health and medicine in today's world. Humanities courses raise questions of how human beings deal with health, medical intervention, illness, and death. Social science courses provide insight into the social, economic, and cultural contexts of health, illness, and health care. Students benefit from the wealth of faculty across campus that have strong teaching and research interests in health care. Sample topics addressed in the course of study include: human values and ethics in medical decision making; patient care as an art form and scientific endeavor; the impact of geography, history and economics on the nature of and access to health care and medicine; cultural/ social definitions of health and provision of health care; global health and humanitarian intervention; technology as an improvement to humanistic health care.

An academic foundation in MHHS can be valuable to students pursuing virtually any career path, including but not limited to social/economic research, medicine, allied health professions, dentistry, health law, medical social work, nursing, public health, and public policy studies.

Students completing the Medical Humanities & Health Studies B.A. program will achieve the following:

Know

• That human experiences of physical and mental health, disease, illness and healing are defined within the context of social, cultural, economic, historical, religious, and legal contexts, and

How these factors impact the perception, delivery and effectiveness of medicine and health care.

Understand

• The human dimensions as well as the socio-cultural, economic and ethical complexities that arise both in illness and health care practice, and
• How the humanities and social sciences can be used to apply more effectively the life science and technological advances that address health issues.

Be able to

• Use the humanities and social sciences ( e.g., literary narrative, bioethical considerations, socio-economic and historical analysis) to understand the human experience of health, illness and healing;
• Critically read, evaluate and interpret multiple sources of information and competing perspectives to understand health problems and issues more thoroughly, and
• Present such analyses in forms using the conventions and standards of the appropriate academic disciplines.