The Center for Health Humanities engages students and healthcare professionals in learning, scholarship, and creative practice to better understand, hear, and care for the profound effects of illness and disease on patients and their caregivers.
Our programs include foundations in Narrative Medicine, History of Medicine, Medical Anthropology, Ethics, Cultural Studies, Science and Technology Studies, Economics, Literature, and the Creative Arts, such as Writing, Film, and Visual Art.
Together, our endeavors shape advances in interprofessional collaboration, communication, and interpretive skill, to foster humility and improve the quality of delivered care.

Welcome to UCSF's Center for Health Humanities

The Center for Health Humanities engages students and healthcare professionals in learning, scholarship, and creative practice to better understand, hear, and care for the profound effects of illness and disease on patients and their caregivers.  

Our campus programs include foundations in Narrative Medicine, History of Health Sciences, Medical Anthropology, Bioethics, Race and Racism in Science and Medicine, Literature, and the Creative Arts, such as Writing, Film, and Visual Art.  

Together, our endeavors shape advances in inter-professional collaboration, communication, and interpretive skill, to foster humility and improve the quality of delivered care.  

Faculty Advisors

UCSF students interested in finding a Faculty Advisor to learn more about or pursue research in a specific topic should review our listing of faculty listed below! For more details on the faculty below, review our listing under the faculty advisors menu:   

Faculty/Post Doctoral: dr. reelaviolette botts-ward, PhD 

Area of Interest: Race, Gender, Medical anthropology, Black feminist health sciences, Holistic healing arts,

Integrative health, Communal care, Poetics, Performance ethnography, Ancestral & intergenerational healing,

African Diasporic cosmologies, Decolonial wellness praxis 

 

Faculty: Winston Chiong, MD PhD 

Area of Interest: Bioethics 

 

Faculty: Brian Dolan, PhD

Area of Interest: Health Humanities, History of Health Sciences

 

Faculty: Elizabeth Dzeng, PhD, MD, MPH, MPhil, MS 

Area of Interest: health equity, anti-racism, community-engaged research, structural racism,

palliative and end-of-life care, human-centered design, medical sociology, bioethics, qualitative research 

 

Faculty: David Elkin, MD, MSL, Co-Director, Consultation Liaison Service, SF General Hospital 

Area of Interest: Narrative Medicine (including health humanities, social sciences, ethics and philosophy) 

 

Faculty: Sheyla Medina, MD
Area of Interest: Poetry & storytelling

 

Faculty: Ian Whitmarsh, PhD
Area of Interest: Medical Anthropology