Who gets sick, who gets better, and why?

The biological mechanisms of medical science and the quantitative sciences of public health only get us partway to the answers to these fundamental questions.  Key aspects of our understanding of health and illness are only answerable through analyses that draw from the methods of humanities and social sciences—including ethnography, history, philosophy, and sociology—to help understand the social context of illness and health outside of the ordered environment of the hospital, clinic, and laboratory. The Johns Hopkins Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine is an interdisciplinary teaching and research unit that bridges the humanities, social sciences, and health sciences across the campuses of Johns Hopkins University to foster innovative interdisciplinary scholarship with maximum impact, and to train undergraduates, graduate students, and health professionals with skills to apply critical social analysis to the study of health and disease.

The Center’s current programs investigate: Medicine, Science, and Humanities; Critical Global Health Studies; Reproduction, Health, and Society; Technology, Data, and Health; Race, Racism, and Health; Social Medicine in Medical Education; and Arts, Humanities, and Health.

Together, the fields of social medicine and medical humanities and arts help health care professionals develop acumen in addressing nuance, contradiction and uncertainty in health care settings and in broader society.  

NIH- NIAID Division of Infectious Diseases

Medicine, Science, and Humanities

The Program in Medicine, Science, and Humanities represents a growing movement in medical education that draws attention to the vital interplay between humanities on the one hand and medical and allied health fields on the other. 
Map of Health

Critical Global Health Studies

The Program in Critical Global Health Studies is dedicated to thinking globally about the structures and systemic issues that affect health.
Right Fallopian tube by Susan Lockhart

Reproduction, Health, and Society

The Program in Reproduction, Health, and Society engages with scholarship and practice that critically examine how these forces come to bear on individuals, institutions, and communities.
Graphical visualisation of tweets containing #breastcancer

Technology, Data, and Health

The Program in Technology, Data, and Health seeks to understand the complex role of diagnostic, therapeutic, and preventive devices in changing the definitions of health and illness, while focusing attention on the increasing role that information technology takes on in mediating access to care in past, present, and future.
An unidentified African American physician, assisted by a nurse, treating a baby born with a club foot at an unidentified public health clinic, circa 1945

Race, Racism, and Health

The Program in Race, Racism and Health draws on the immense expertise of our affiliates to engage in research, outreach and actions committed to the study of and action against racism in medicine. The Center recognizes the immense importance of critically examining the role of racism in the production of medical knowledge and the linkages between racist thought and legacies of oppression. 

Social Medicine in Medical Education

The program in Critical Pedagogies of Health and Society seeks to build students’ structural capacities in social medicine, an interdisciplinary field which engages clinical, social science, public health, and health policy perspectives to better understand and intervene upon the social determinants, social meanings, and social responses to illness and health.

Arts, Humanities, and Health

The Program in the Arts, Humanities, and Health engages members of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions and East Baltimore communities in a range of activities at the nexus of artistic expression, humanist inquiry and well-being.

Events

Critical Global Health Studies / Critical Pedagogies of Health and Society / Medicine, Science, & Humanities / Race, Racism, & Health

CFP: New Perspectives in the History of Child Health

...
All Day
November 30

**2024 Workshop and Special Issue: Call for Proposals**

Call for paper proposals for an international workshop on child health history hosted at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, on June 21-22, 2024. There is support available for travel and lodging. The workshop is sponsored by: The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the University of Fribourg

In bringing together junior and senior scholars working on issues surrounding children’s health and healthcare, the workshop aims at developing a series of articles for a special issue journal focusing on child health and children’s experiences of health and illness from a historical perspective. Though the field of children’s history has grown over the past thirty years, it deserves more attention from historians of medicine and public health. Therefore, the workshop aims to underscore the importance of child health as a field of research and point to its potential for historical and historiographical interventions in the history of medicine and public health. In addition to historians, we encourage paper proposals from scholars working at the intersections of histories of children’s health, disability studies, non-western areas of study, healthcare disparities, health policy, sociology, anthropology, or other related fields.  We especially encourage submissions from scholars whose work focuses on child health in low- and middle-income non-Western countries. Applicants must be prepared to submit a full working draft of their paper prior to the meeting. The workshop will be led by Jason Chernesky (Johns Hopkins University; jcherne2@jhmi.edu),  Janet Golden (Rutgers University; jgolden@camden.rutgers.edu), and Felix Rietmann (University of Fribourg; felix.rietmann@unifr.ch).

Please submit an abstract (max. 300 words) and a brief CV here. The deadline for submission is Friday, November 30, 2023. All questions can be addressed to Jason M. Chernesky: jcherne2@jhmi.edu

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