Humanities and the Digital Future of Health and Healthcare: A Curriculum

FAIN: AKB-285866-22

Northeastern University (Boston, MA 02115-5005)
Sari Altschuler (Project Director: September 2021 to present)
Christopher M. Parsons (Co Project Director: March 2022 to present)

A three-year project to implement a half major in digital health humanities.

Early in the pandemic, a group of physicians declared that healthcare might not be prepared, but “the new reality is that virtual care has arrived.” COVID-19 has made healthcare more digital—and revealed how data-driven and digital it already was. We propose to implement a curriculum at Northeastern to prepare students to address the social and cultural aspects of this digital revolution and to be alert to the significant ethical issues it raises. Our digital health humanities curriculum will train students with diverse interdisciplinary skills for tomorrow’s jobs. Humanities, health, and computer science faculty will collaborate to design courses to grow our Health Humanities minor into a half major, which will pair with Health Science and Public Health to form two new combined majors with a focus in digital health. The grant will also support experiential learning opportunities for NU students in and beyond the university and open-access modules made freely available for all.

Associated Products

Engl 3460: The Archives of Public Health (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: Engl 3460: The Archives of Public Health
Author: Sari Altschuler
Abstract: This course introduces students to the history of public health through firsthand experience working with archival materials. Each offering will be focused on a particular public health crisis in US history. Students will first learn about the history of the crisis, focusing on the stories told about the crisis: how individuals experienced the crisis, how communities encountered, managed, and responded to the crisis, and what stories public health institutions produced to narrate their own efforts and shape individual behaviors. We will then spend a significant portion of the semester in the archive collecting and analyzing examples of the narratives and forms of data produced during the period. The culminating work of the class will be to collaborate on a publicly available online exhibit based on archival research undertaken during the semester.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: http://https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GEEkmZ8W2uA_I8mNgqnUK0jCS-T2FapQBWdq4JgK77E/edit?usp=sharing
Primary URL Description: This is a link to the syllabus
Audience: Undergraduate

Health Humanities and Health Science, BS (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: Health Humanities and Health Science, BS
Author: Sari Altschuler
Author: Chris Parsons
Abstract: The combined Bachelor of Science in Health Humanities and Health Science is designed for students who would like to learn how to think about health using humanities, social sciences, and science skills. The humanities train students to navigate the complexities of interpersonal interaction and their ethical implications, to relate the micro to the macro and texts to contexts, to historicize encounters, to communicate accurately and effectively across a variety of media, and to engage in creative analytical thinking about healthcare. The landscape of healthcare is quickly changing, and this training is designed to equip students both for the diverse forms of healthcare professions that exist today and for the varieties of professions in the future. This combined major will appeal to students who want to pursue graduate study and research in public health, medicine, and other clinical professions.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://catalog.northeastern.edu/undergraduate/social-sciences-humanities/interdisciplinary/health-humanities-health-science/
Primary URL Description: This links to the main page for the combined major. For the requirements, etc, click through the tabs.
Audience: Undergraduate

Health Humanities and Public Health, BA (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: Health Humanities and Public Health, BA
Author: Sari Altschuler
Author: Chris Parsons
Abstract: The combined Bachelor of Arts in Health Humanities and Public Health is designed for students who would like to learn how to think about health using humanities, social sciences, and science skills with a focus on public health. The humanities train students to navigate the complexities of interpersonal interaction and their ethical implications, to relate the micro to the macro and texts to contexts, to historicize encounters, to communicate accurately and effectively across a variety of media, and to engage in creative analytical thinking about healthcare. The landscape of public health is quickly changing, and this training is designed to equip students both for the diverse forms of healthcare professions that exist today and for the varieties of professions in the future. This combined major will appeal to students who want to pursue graduate study and research in public health and health humanities.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://catalog.northeastern.edu/undergraduate/social-sciences-humanities/interdisciplinary/health-humanities-public-health/
Audience: Undergraduate

HIST 3344. The History of Western Public Health (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: HIST 3344. The History of Western Public Health
Author: Chris Parsons
Abstract: Although societies have always sought to preserve their health and expand their numbers, it is only relatively recently in the western world that citizens have expected or allowed states to manage public health. This class examines the rise of the discipline and institution of public health and charts the transition from efforts to mitigate the effects of infectious epidemic diseases to the emergence of trained public health professionals that, using new quantitative tools of the state, innovated and implemented tools aimed at protecting and promoting the health of specific populations. Specifically, this class will examine two aspects of this history that tie the emergence of the discipline of public health to a globalizing Europe and Anglo-America. The first is the gathering and use of new forms of data. In order to treat whole populations, one must be able to see whole populations and, with the regularizing of vital statistics, the gathering of local and national censuses, and new administrative tools that states used to measure and monitor the movement of goods and people, the birth of public health is closely tied to new types of data and data analysis. The second theme that will run through this course is the centrality of empire and colonialism to the discipline of public health. public health became an important tool in the expansion of empires that sought to administer and monitor subject populations from European and North American capitals. The promotion of health and introduction of western medicine also became a powerful justification for intervention into the lives and societies of subject communities as well.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://catalog.northeastern.edu/course-descriptions/hist/
Primary URL Description: See entry in course catalog here.
Secondary URL: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/6eyo8zlksqs0sg4b8e6n6/3344-Public-Health-Syllabus.docx?rlkey=hvnk6nmybkooj1z8d9et13oo2&dl=0
Audience: Undergraduate

ARCH 5312. Mapping and Building Health. (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: ARCH 5312. Mapping and Building Health.
Author: Sara Carr
Abstract: Introduces students to historical and contemporary frameworks linking the built and natural environment to health outcomes. Examines analog (field documentation) and digital (GIS) spatial mapping techniques for identifying risks and opportunities for health. Offers students an opportunity to engage in interdisciplinary creative problem solving for real-world scenarios and to write essays on selected topics.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://catalog.northeastern.edu/course-descriptions/arch/
Primary URL Description: See entry in course catalog
Secondary URL: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/n32hmslgznx0e52gbh49c/ARCH-5312-Proposal.doc?rlkey=q29edleyc53httfs4u5gh0u14&dl=0
Secondary URL Description: Syllabus
Audience: Undergraduate

PHIL 3065. Bioethics in the Age of Big Data. (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: PHIL 3065. Bioethics in the Age of Big Data.
Author: John Basl
Abstract: Explores the ethical issues that arise in the application of emerging applications of AI and Big Data in health and healthcare, especially the ways in which those applications challenge and force us to rethink traditional bioethical frameworks and norms.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://catalog.northeastern.edu/course-descriptions/phil/
Primary URL Description: See course entry here
Secondary URL: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/za5i52ibseadk45qt9ltu/PHIL-3065-Bioethics-in-the-Age-of-Big-Data.pdf?rlkey=vtvhe63ratfp28bp4f9b9mu92&dl=0
Secondary URL Description: See syllabus here.
Audience: Undergraduate

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