The Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus hosted the 4th international health humanities conference: Health Humanities: The Next Decade (Pedagogies, Practices, Politics). This cross-disciplinary and inter-professional conference brought together scholars, educators, clinicians, health advocates, students, patients and caregivers in an effort to identify the core issues and guiding values as well as define the expanding scope of the Health Humanities for the next decade. The following question guided our efforts throughout this two-and-one-half-day conference:
What are the implications, responsibilities, and expectations of identifying as Health Humanities scholars, educators, practitioners, and advocates?
Related disciplines included—but were not restricted to—narrative medicine, literature and medicine, age studies, disability studies, deaf studies, gender studies, fat studies, queer theory, ethnicity and race studies, feminist science studies, cultural and media studies, popular culture, and queer, disability, and feminist bioethics.
- social advocacy and political activism
- traditional and emergent constituencies
- accessibility in the clinic and in the classroom
- inclusiveness and affinities
- the relationship between practice and theory
- the longing for or resistance to disciplinary purity
- how to build and sustain the health humanities as an interdisciplinary and inter-professional discipline
- the arts in care, research, education, and community engagement/activism
- the next/new frontier of undergraduate education