Alex Ram

health humanities are the application of humanities disciplines (arts, literature, languages, law, history, philosophy, religion, etc.) to discourse about, expression of, and/or the promotion of the dimensions of human health and well being. As a construct, it may be understood as being situated at one end of a polar continuum, opposite the health sciences (or biomedical sciences, behavioral sciences, and social sciences). While this applied capacity of the humanities is not itself a novel idea, the construct of the health humanities as a unified, meta-discipline has only recently begun to emerge over the first decade of the 21st Century.

In the health humanities, health (and the promotion of health) is understood according to the constructivist (and other non-positivist) principles indigenous to the humanities, as opposed to the positivism of science. The health humanities do not serve to replace the health sciences, but rather offer a contrasting (and potentially collaborative) epistemological paradigm and pragmatic approach with respect to health and its promotion. In large part, their foundations are grounded historically in the medical humanities, but transcend the scope and depth of the medical humanities, in the areas of humanities-based conceptualizations of health, and applications of humanities for health promotion. The health humanities construct is distinct from complementary and alternative medicine, which essentially consists of non-conventional interventions, applied within a conventional health sciences paradigm.

The health humanities are a growing movement internationally. A conference on the health humanities was held October 13-15, 2006, at Green College, University of British Columbia. In January 2009, Paul Crawford became the world's first Professor of Health Humanities at The University of Nottingham, and with Dr Victoria Tischler, Charley Baker, Dr Brian Brown, Dr Lisa Mooney-Smith and Professor Ronald Carter created an international health humanities initiative that included the AHRC-funded International Health Humanities Conference (IHHC). The 1st IHH conference was held on August 6-8, 2010, at The University of Nottingham, United Kingdom.. The conference opened with Professor Crawford's address entitled ‘Health humanities: Literature and Madness’ and included keynote lectures by Professor Kay Redfield Jamison and Professor Elaine Showalter. Mark A. Radcliffe, who also spoke at the conference, reported on 'health humanities' in his weekly column for the Nursing Times. The conference was also reported in the Bethlem Blog. . The 2nd IHHC will be hosted at the University of Colorado in 2012 with a theme of film, media and health. Planning is in place for the 3rd conference in 2014 to be held at Montclair State University, New Jersey.


Adapted from the Wikipedia article Health humanities, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki