Mission

The medical humanities area of concentration offers medical students the opportunity to undertake sustained humanistic and social science ventures that will enhance our understanding of the human response to disease and suffering, deepen the interpretive skills of health professionals, situate medicine in its broader social and cultural context, and improve the delivery of health care.

The Medical School Objectives Project (MSOP), developed by the American Association of Medical Colleges, highlights the extraordinary value of understanding the "meaning of patient's stories." Research and creative production in the medical humanities form an invigorating means of reflecting on such narratives while challenging health care professionals to broaden their engagement with medicine as a humanistic endeavor.

• Develop research-led medical humanities
• Create a cross-disciplinary, cross-campus forum for medical students and faculty to support their work in the medical humanities
• Help establish UCSF and UCB as a leader in developing the medical humanities in medical education.

For students, the medical humanities area of concentration program provides a centralized institutional resource to learn from peers, receive mentorship from diverse faculty, and enjoy recognition for the personal and professional contribution made by a project.

For faculty, the program provides institutional support for their commitment to students. It also offers a means for scholars from diverse and often isolated locations on both UC campuses to create an intellectual forum for their work.

For the purposes of this program, we define "humanities" quite broadly to include traditional fields (literature, rhetoric, philosophy, religious studies, ethics and history, for example); creative writing and the arts (visual, theater, media); as well as the humanities-oriented social sciences (anthropology, sociology, for example).

The program draws upon faculty and interdisciplinary resources from both the UCSF and UCB campuses. A rich variety of opportunities for research and training in the medical humanities already exists on both campuses in many different departments and programs. A few of these are: the joint UCB/UCSF Joint Medical Program, the Center for Humanities and Health Sciences (UCSF), the Townsend Center for Humanities (UCB), the Center for Medicine, the Humanities, and Law (UCB), numerous humanities faculty who are scholars of medical topics, and MDs who are writers, poets, artists, and social science researchers.

The program will also launch a joint UCSF/UCB lecture series in order to promote further discussion of the issues central to the medical humanities.