Health Humanities Consortium

Curriculum & Assessment Committee

The Curriculum and Assessment Committee (CAC) supports the efforts of institutions and instructors in developing courses and programs in the health humanities. Toward this end, the CAC has spearheaded the following projects:

Completed Projects:

  • A Toolkit to assist in the creation of health humanities curricula that will address academic concerns, administrative concerns, and future employability of students
  • A a repository of syllabi in courses related to the health humanities at all levels (developed in collaboration with the Medical Futures Lab at Rice University, Kirsten Ostherr, PhD, and Serena Barbieri, MD)
  • A comprehensive focus group study was published in the Journal of Medical Humanities (Oct, 2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-025-09992-z.
    This study was designed to solicit views from self-identified North American health humanities educators from academic programs. The primary aim was to garner broad perspectives on what distinguishes health humanities academic programs from other academic programs and what content programs should deliver to students. The goal was to distill defining features and parameters of a high-quality health humanities educational program, inquiring in particular about knowledge, skills, and values. Our findings suggest that even though health humanities may have neither canonical knowledge bases nor universal methodologies, overarching themes speak to a consensus of field-level priorities that transcend programmatic variation.

Ongoing Projects:

  • Survey of health humanities alumni
  • The CAC’s Job Seekers Initiative (JSI) is an ongoing project to develop resources and host events to support health humanities program graduates as they apply for careers in academia and industry.

Co-chairs: Rosemary Weatherston and Rachel Bracken.

Digital Health Humanities Lead Researcher: Kirsten Ostherr, PhD
Digital Health Humanities Research Fellow: Serena Barbieri, MD

For more information, to join the CAC, or to contribute to a CAC project, contact Rosemary Weatherston <weatherr@udmercy.edu> and Rachel Bracken <rbracken@neomed.edu>