The Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine is committed to critical pedagogy with clinical and public health professions trainees as well as undergraduate and graduate students in a range of social science and humanities disciplines. This program 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. The practice of social medicine draws attention to the fact that all disease, cure, prevention, and health care inherently have social as well as biological dimensions that are of equal importance in ensuing positive health outcomes.
Center scholars are actively involved in curriculum development and didactic education for medical students in their pre-clinical and clinical years at Johns Hopkins. Through our contributions to broader curricular goals and more granular course content, we aim to train health professional students in critical awareness of structural forces, including racism, that shape health experiences, outcomes, and systems.