'You just emotionally break: understanding COVID-19 narratives through public health humanities
News reports that feature the experiences of healthcare workers have shaped public conversations about the pandemic from its earliest days. For many, stories of the pandemic have been an introduction to the way public health emergencies intersect with cultural, social, structural, political and spiritual determinants. Such stories often feature clinicians and other providers as characters in pandemic tales of heroism, tragedy and, increasingly, frustration. Examining three common categories of provider-focused news narratives—the clinician as a uniquely vulnerable front-line worker, clinician frustration with vaccine...
Source: Medical Humanities - December 19, 2023 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Saffran, L., Doobay-Persaud, A. Tags: COVID-19 Original research Source Type: research
The future of translational medical humanities: bridging the data/narrative divide
This essay argues that emerging forms of translational work in the field of medical humanities offer valuable methods for engaging with communities outside of academic settings. The first section of the essay provides a synthetic overview of definitions and critical engagements with the concept of ‘translation’ in the context of medical humanities, a field that, in the wake of the COVID pandemic, can serve as an exemplar for other fields of the humanities. The second section explains the ‘data/narrative’ divide in medicine and health to demonstrate the need for new translational methodologies that c...
Source: Medical Humanities - December 19, 2023 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Ostherr, K. Tags: Open access, COVID-19 Original research Source Type: research
Transparent boundaries as scenographies of trust: the COVID-19 pandemic from the view of material cultural studies and artistic works
From the start, the profound transformations that accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic found expression in a plethora of objects and facilities that dominated our daily lives far beyond the clinical sphere. Supermarkets, hotel receptions, taxis, restaurants, doctors’ surgeries and even schools were equipped with plexiglass screens of all sizes and shapes to continue to allow face-to-face encounters. In our paper, we trace these changes and their social impact in our everyday world. Starting from the material cultures of our daily spaces that changed in the context of COVID-19 and the new patterns of movement that had to...
Source: Medical Humanities - December 19, 2023 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Ankele, M., Kaiser, C. Tags: COVID-19 Original research Source Type: research
Solidarity during the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from a nine-country interview study in Europe
Calls for solidarity have been an ubiquitous feature in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we know little about how people have thought of and practised solidarity in their everyday lives since the beginning of the pandemic. What role does solidarity play in people’s lives, how does it relate to COVID-19 public health measures and how has it changed in different phases of the pandemic? Situated within the medical humanities at the intersection of philosophy, bioethics, social sciences and policy studies, this article explores how the practice-based understanding of solidarity formulated by Prainsack and ...
Source: Medical Humanities - December 19, 2023 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Kieslich, K., Fiske, A., Gaille, M., Galasso, I., Geiger, S., Hangel, N., Horn, R., Lanzing, M., Libert, S., Lievevrouw, E., Lucivero, F., Marelli, L., Prainsack, B., Schönweitz, F., Sharon, T., Spahl, W., Van Hoyweghen, I., Zimmermann, B. M. Tags: COVID-19 Original research Source Type: research
Postdigital health practices: new directions in medical humanities
Digitalisation has changed the way we understand and practice health. The recent pandemic has accelerated some of the developments in digital health and brought about modifications in public access to information. Taking this into consideration, this programmatic paper sets the stage for and conceptualises postdigital health practices as a possible field of inquiry within medical humanities. While delineating some central aspects of said practices, I draw attention to their significance in contemporary strategies of knowledge production. Spotlighting online environments as the point of ingress for the analysis of these pra...
Source: Medical Humanities - December 19, 2023 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Pietrzak-Franger, M. Tags: Open access, COVID-19 Original research Source Type: research
Medical Humanities in Transition
The foundations for this special issue were laid during the early days of the pandemic, when the editors co-organised an online seminar series to address the theme of borders in the Medical Humanities.1 At the time of our virtual exchanges, national borders were closed, various travel requirements were introduced, and COVID-vaccination passports issued. The pandemic confronted us with many uncomfortable questions, such as: What measures, as societies, are we willing to take in order to protect vulnerable, ageing and marginalised groups and to fight systemic racism? How will we mourn the many dead? By spotlighting these iss...
Source: Medical Humanities - December 19, 2023 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Pietrzak-Franger, M., Elsner, A. M. Tags: COVID-19 Editorial Source Type: research
'Freudism and modernity: transcultural impact of psychoanalysis in the modern Turkish novel
This article focuses on the novelists’ engagement with psychoanalysis in their critique of the modernisation project adopted in Turkey through the theme of the ‘self-in-crisis’. Both texts contribute to the broader discussions of their milieu in a way that presents psychoanalysis as being representative of that which is modern and portray it critically to underline the dissonances between the old, traditional values and the new, imported ones. (Source: Medical Humanities)
Source: Medical Humanities - August 24, 2023 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Alkan, B. Tags: Original research Source Type: research
Correction: Health, policy and emotion
Arnold-Forster A, Brown M, Moulds A. Health, policy and emotion. Med Humanit 2022;48:389–393. doi: 10.1136/medhum-2022-012541
Author affiliation for Alison Moulds was previously published incorrectly and has been updated in the online HTML and PDF. (Source: Medical Humanities)
Source: Medical Humanities - August 24, 2023 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Tags: Correction Source Type: research
Narrative and its discontents
This review considers recent challenges to, and changes within, narrative medicine as a paradigm for humanities-based medical education. It suggests that, while narrative medicine has often been criticised for emphasising narrative at the expense of other dimensions of human experience, newer criticism has focused more on its relationship with other areas of medical knowledge. In different ways, recent work has shown greater interest in taking in humanities perspectives on their own terms, rather than (this is the charge against narrative medicine) instrumentalising them as diagnostic tools. The review concludes by conside...
Source: Medical Humanities - August 24, 2023 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Morrison, A. Tags: Review essay Source Type: research
The language of vaccination campaigns during COVID-19
Understanding what makes communication effective when designing public health messages is of key importance. This applies in particular to vaccination campaigns, which aim to encourage vaccine uptake and respond to vaccine hesitancy and dispel any myth or misinformation. This paper explores the ways in which the governments of Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) promoted COVID-19 vaccination as a first-line strategy and studies health message effectiveness by examining the language of official vaccination campaigns, vaccine uptake across the different nations and the health message preferences of unvaccinated and v...
Source: Medical Humanities - August 24, 2023 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Vilar-Lluch, S., McClaughlin, E., Knight, D., Adolphs, S., Nichele, E. Tags: Open access, COVID-19 Original research Source Type: research
John Buchans race through life, chased by his only foe--illness
This article examines John Buchan’s experience of gastric illness, dyspepsia and duodenal ulcers within the medical context of his life during the first half of the twentieth century. In tracing some of the different and changing approaches to gastric illness over the intervening decades, it compares the medical knowledge and practices of that period with medical knowledge and treatment today. The article’s low key empirical intersectional examination, too, touches on both ethics and justice. Its importance lies not only in its discussion on past and present medicine, but also in its scrutiny of Buchan’s ...
Source: Medical Humanities - August 24, 2023 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Durey, J. F. Tags: Original research Source Type: research
Medical specimens and the erasure of racial violence: the case of Harriet Cole
This article analyses the complex narrative of Harriet Cole, a 36-year-old African-American woman whose body was delivered to the anatomy department of Hahnemann Medical School in 1888. The anatomist Rufus B Weaver used her preserved remains to create a singular anatomical specimen, an intact extraction of the ‘cerebro-spinal nervous system’. Initially anonymised, deracialised and unsexed, the central nervous system specimen endured for decades before her identity as a working-class woman of colour was reunited with her remains. In the 1930s, media accounts began to circulate that Harriet Cole had bequeathed he...
Source: Medical Humanities - August 24, 2023 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Lawrence, S. C., Lederer, S. E. Tags: Open access Original research Source Type: research
Performing HeLa: theatrical bodies and living remains
As a biomedical entity that has been the subject of a plethora of artistic and cultural projects, HeLa, the first immortal human cell line, calls for investigations into the human. Extracted and cultured from the cervical tumour of African-American woman, Henrietta Lacks, at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1950s’ Baltimore, HeLa’s robust capacity to grow has ensured its role in numerous medical advances. The first part of this essay synthesises scientific, sociocultural, familial and philosophical perspectives on HeLa, while the second half applies these perspectives to a reading of a theatrical production, HeLa (201...
Source: Medical Humanities - August 24, 2023 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Cox, E. Tags: Original research Source Type: research
Integrating person-centred care and social justice: a model for practice with larger-bodied patients
Person-centred care (PCC) has been touted as a promising paradigm for improving patients’ experiences and outcomes, and the overall therapeutic environment for a range of health conditions, including obesity. While this approach represents an important shift away from a paternalistic and disease-focused paradigm, we argue that PCC must be explicitly informed by a social justice lens to achieve optimal conditions for health and well-being. We suggest that existing studies on PCC for obesity only go so far in achieving social justice goals as they operate within a biomedical model that by default pathologises excess we...
Source: Medical Humanities - August 24, 2023 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Kanagasingam, D., Hurd, L., Norman, M. Tags: Editor's choice Original research Source Type: research
Metaphors and decision making in parental blogs about their children with life-limiting diseases: whos afraid of the war metaphor?
The use of metaphors aids understanding by allowing us to think of complex problems in terms of relatively simple and more concrete information. As such, metaphors shape thought and guide future action. While metaphors are known to play a role in medical treatment decision-making, the effect of particular metaphors is unknown.
This paper explores the metaphors West-European parents use for their child suffering from a life-limiting condition by analysing 15 blogs from Dutch, German and English and Welsh parents. The analysis found that all parents use war metaphors to describe their child and their disease. Describing thei...
Source: Medical Humanities - August 24, 2023 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Neefjes, V. Tags: Original research Source Type: research
