/ Center for Community and Global Health/ A Once-in-a-Century Crisis Can Help Educate Doctors

A Once-in-a-Century Crisis Can Help Educate Doctors

April 10, 2021

Image care of the New York Times

Credit: Soomin Jung/NYT

The horrors of Covid-19 may give proponents of the liberal arts an unexpected opening, Dr. Molly Worthen writes in an opinion piece published in the New York Times Sunday Review.

The pandemic is a once-in-a-century crisis that may force health professionals and medical schools to look beyond the traditional tools of modern medicine and think more broadly about how we train doctors to grapple with public health catastrophes.

Including the the humanities and social sciences in medical training can do more than shed light on the cultural context of disease. It can also help doctors connect with patients as multidimensional beings.

To make sense of disproportionate Covid death rates in Black and Latino communities or white evangelicals’ vaccine hesitancy, medical researchers need to consider everything from the history of redlining to theologies of God’s judgment. Medical professionals cannot afford to stay in highly specialized lanes or rely solely on the familiar quantitative methods of the medical sciences.

Read the full story at the New York Times.

Trouble accessing content behind a paywall? L&C community can get the full story through Watzek Library.

Immersive Learning

How Migrant Stories Are Told

A new course, Playing at the Border: Migration and Art, examines how migrant and refugee stories are told in film, theatre, and visual art, providing students with opportunities to engage directly with Portland’s immigrant communities.

Come to Narrative Medicine Skills Training!

With support from the Mellon Foundation, Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative (NWNMC) is developing Narrative Medicine Skills Training.

Narrative Medicine Skills Training introduces the narrative medicine principles of attention, representation, and affiliation and develops participant skills of listening and witnessing. We will reflect on how listening and witnessing can be applied to stories of health, illness and healing in diverse healthcare settings to improve care and support healing.

Training is open to students, health professionals, faculty, staff and community members– anyone curious about the practice of narrative medicine.

Narrative Medicine Skills Training

Saturday, February, 22
8:45-3:30

in-person and on-campus
Smith Hall
Lewis & Clark College

Register Here

Health Coverage: How Potential Providence Strike Impacts Patients

Carolyn Zook, Associate Director at the L&C Center for Community and Global Health is featured in this KGW8 story on the possibility of healthcare strikes in Oregon. She shares her expertise alongside L&C Law School Prof. Keith Cunningham-Parmeter

WATCH HERE

Experiential Learning

Health + Humanities Internships = Impact

The Center for Community and Global Health offers funding for health and humanities internships with Portland-area partners. Whether over the summer or during the school year, L&C students benefit from paid internships that turn career exploration into action.