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

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 made healthcare more digital—and revealed how data-driven and digital it already was. With a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant, we are implementing 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.

Media coverage: Boston Globe

Key Personnel:

• John Basl
• Sara Jensen Carr
• Matthew Goodwin
• Stephen Intille
• Régine Jean-Charles
• Elizabeth Maddock Dillon
• Tiffany Joseph
• Alisa Lincoln

Outside collaborators:

• Massachusetts Historical Society
• Countway Library of Medicine