Medical Humanities最新文献

{"title":"Some thoughts on social prescription and the arts.","authors":"Sloka Iyengar","doi":"10.1136/medhum-2025-013263","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2025-013263","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Social prescription (SP) entails a model of care where healthcare professionals can help address the social determinants of health by prescribing non-medical activities such as time in community volunteering, time in nature or the arts. Arts-based SP aims to use the power of creative engagement to decrease isolation and loneliness and promote quality of life. I am a neuroscientist and practitioner of a traditional Indian dance form called Bharatanatyam. I work at the intersection of the arts and the sciences and am creating the foundation to use Bharatanatyam for creative ageing. While the arts have immense therapeutic power, in this article, I raise some questions on the application of arts-based SP programmes, especially where traditional art forms such as Bharatanatyam are in question. I suggest that arts-based SP programmes can foster a transactional relationship with the arts, hurting the art form and its practitioners. I also pose some inquiries on the evaluation of these art forms and the impacts of this assessment on the art form in question. The goal of this paper is to enter into dialog with artists, arts practitioners, funders and the public on the use of the arts as a prescription.</p>","PeriodicalId":46435,"journal":{"name":"Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144508823","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What are 'biohackers' hacking? Identifying motivations and meaning-making frameworks.","authors":"Victoria Lorrimar","doi":"10.1136/medhum-2025-013261","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2025-013261","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Biohacking, a do-it-yourself approach to optimising functionality of body and mind, encompasses a diverse range of practices, and might be understood as a particularly contemporary expression of a larger commitment to the malleability and individuality of the self. Biohackers remix scientific knowledge and technological innovations into bespoke individual solutions that differ markedly according to the sociopolitical context in which they are located. Through a science and technology studies approach that attends to these contextual configurations of technology in relation to human bodies, a conceptual analysis of the underlying motivations, alignment with broader hacker ethos and meaning-making contexts of contemporary biohacking approaches recommends a working model that breaks biohacking down into four strands for further research: DIYbio, spiritual augmentation, health and wellness optimisation and technological futurism.</p>","PeriodicalId":46435,"journal":{"name":"Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144286801","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Small hands, big ideas: exploring nurturing care through Beatrice Alemagna's 'What is a Child?'","authors":"Claudia Ravaldi, Alfredo Vannacci","doi":"10.1136/medhum-2025-013226","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2025-013226","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study examines the use of Beatrice Alemagna's picture book 'What is a Child?' as a tool for understanding and implementing nurturing care principles in perinatal healthcare settings. Through mixed-methods analysis of forum discussions among 42 perinatal professionals, including psychologists, midwives, physicians, nurses, pharmacists and early childhood educators, we explored how engagement with the book's metaphorical and visual elements facilitated professional reflection and development. Qualitative analysis revealed four primary themes: the power of metaphors in conveying complex caregiving concepts, the importance of collective care and community support, understanding the temporality of care and fostering transformative dialogue. Quantitative analysis showed significant differences in thematic engagement across professional groups, with medical professionals emphasising physical health (20.8%) and nutrition (32.1%), while psychologists focused more on early learning opportunities (28.3%) and responsive caregiving (21.0%). However, the picture book's narrative framework encouraged professionals to transcend their domain-specific perspectives, fostering a more holistic appreciation of nurturing care principles. These findings suggest that carefully selected picture books can serve as sophisticated tools for professional development in perinatal care, particularly in translating abstract theoretical concepts into actionable insights while honouring different professional perspectives and expertise.</p>","PeriodicalId":46435,"journal":{"name":"Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144286800","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Educating healthcare students in the Sustainable Development Goals: from translational science to translational humanities.","authors":"Eivind Engebretsen, Trisha Greenhalgh, Paul K J Han","doi":"10.1136/medhum-2025-013292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2025-013292","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Healthcare courses typically approach Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) education from a 'translational science' perspective. Students are taught about 'evidence-based' interventions, which are developed through scientific research (hence, assumed to be politically neutral), implemented with 'fidelity' (ie, in a standardised way in diverse contexts) and then 'rolled out'. Progress is measured using standardised indicators. We argue for a shift to 'translational humanities', in which students are supported to engage critically with the cultural and political dynamics and epistemic uncertainties underpinning the setting of SDG targets, the development and implementation of programmes, and the measurement of success. Translational humanities seeks to surface alternative framings and measures of success, especially by giving voice to marginalised and ignored communities. This radical approach, informed by political philosophy, recognises that conflict among stakeholders and the uncertainty it generates are inevitable and can be a productive force (eg, if surfaced and used to inform multifaceted debate and values-driven action).Whereas a translational science approach to SDG education emphasises objectivity, technical precision and (the pursuit of) certainty, a translational humanities approach seeks to foster human and interpretive qualities such as reflection, critical thinking, commitment to human rights and fairness, appreciation of complexity, epistemic humility and flexibility, willingness to examine problems from multiple angles, the capacity to adapt, and tolerance of uncertainty. In a worked example of how this can be achieved, we introduce the 'critical datathon'-a group exercise in which students engage deeply with case studies of SDGs, examine the assumptions and interests behind conventional solutions, and navigate diverse implementation contexts.</p>","PeriodicalId":46435,"journal":{"name":"Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144250234","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sharing in the community of having lost a child.","authors":"Malene Beck, Michael van Manen","doi":"10.1136/medhum-2025-013312","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2025-013312","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>What does it mean to share an experience of losing a child? Not solely to put such an experience into words, but also to speak of it to others who may share their own experiences of loss? What is shared in such moments of sharing? Here, we present a phenomenological study of sharing among parents who have lost a child. We draw on observations and anecdotes from a parental bereavement group. Our thoughts are organised around thematic statements that reflect the value of these sharing spaces for bereaved parents: sharing as an experience of sharing something, sharing as an experience of a communal connection, sharing as an experience of empathic reflection and sharing as an experience of shared responsibility. By articulating these aspects, we hope not to prove the value of sharing but instead to show the meaningfulness of it; thereby, contributing to the very sparse body of evidence on home-based care and support for bereaved families. Exploring the phenomenology of sharing the loss of a child discloses empathic communal shared spaces among bereaving parents that may be inherent to palliative care practices.</p>","PeriodicalId":46435,"journal":{"name":"Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144250235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Complexities of the charitable and philanthropic landscape within Mexico's children's hospitals.","authors":"Rosa Maria Mendizabal-Espinosa, Viviana Ramírez","doi":"10.1136/medhum-2025-013229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2025-013229","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In today's Mexico, approximately 50% of children experience multidimensional poverty, with Indigenous children particularly affected; half of them live in extreme poverty and nearly all lack access to social security. The current political landscape threatens to exacerbate these issues. Reductions in public spending and the dismantling of federal child health programmes are likely to further hinder children's development, well-being and health by limiting access to vital services like childcare, education and healthcare. Children's hospitals in Mexico may increasingly depend on philanthropy and civil society support, however, the relationship between the State and the philanthropic sector is not without problems. This paper presents a case study of 'social assistance' in Mexico, by exploring the structure and organisation of two non-for-profit groups and their relationship with a children's hospital and healthcare staff in the southeast of Mexico through semi-structured interviews and document analysis. It aims to explore the challenges and tensions that arise in the collaboration between the State and philanthropic organisations, particularly in the context of sustaining and enhancing children's hospitals. Our study reveals that the philanthropic sector has tried to compensate for some of the enormous needs that historical and more recent challenges imply to the most vulnerable families when seeking medical attention for their children. However, philanthropic efforts are ultimately sustained by the same families through a 'co-responsibility model'. There is an urgent need for public policies based on human rights and social reform, which simplify bureaucratic processes and support philanthropic organisations in aiding vulnerable groups beyond the healthcare system's scope. Our case studies suggest that today philanthropic organisations not only complement the activities of the public health system by giving support to the families of the patients, but also substitute the State in the delivery of very basic medical care people should have the right to receive.</p>","PeriodicalId":46435,"journal":{"name":"Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144250233","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Strained encounters of the anthropogene: preservation and extinction in Tatsuaki Ishiguro's 'It is with the Deepest Sincerity that I Offer Prayers'.","authors":"Lara Choksey","doi":"10.1136/medhum-2025-013282","DOIUrl":"10.1136/medhum-2025-013282","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Calculating biovalue in an age of planetary emergency involves fraught decisions over what and whom should be saved, over the science used to make these decisions, and the biotechnologies used for this partial salvation. Tatsuaki Ishiguro's short story, 'It is with the Deepest Sincerity that I Offer Prayers', dramatises these decisions through a series of strained encounters in a remote species preservation centre between two molecular biologists and the last two remaining members of a rare species of mouse. Set on Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, largely inhabited by Indigenous Ainu communities until the island's colonisation in the late 19th century, Ishiguro's story subverts the teleology of species-life on which conservation models depend. Unsettling what Krithika Srinivasan identifies as human-centred values of well-being (and sexual reproduction) in wildlife conservation, these strained encounters between scientists and test subjects, selectionist methods and theories of life are a genre of what Hannah Landecker has recently called 'anthropogenic biology': relations of organic matter shaped by biological control, both affected by and exceeding calculations of scientific efficacy. The article tackles questions of reproductive justice for communities who fall outside core sites of climate mitigation, building on research that shows how conservation projects obscure the realities of environmental pressures caused by industrialisation while upholding a species-centred, genetic ark model of survival. The molecular biologists of Ishiguro's story encounter something akin to what Landecker calls life as aftermath: ecological flourishing that is historically bound to particular times and places, and which cannot be reproduced indefinitely.</p>","PeriodicalId":46435,"journal":{"name":"Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144188240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Death, desire and disruptors.","authors":"Sabina Dosani","doi":"10.1136/medhum-2025-013383","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2025-013383","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46435,"journal":{"name":"Medical Humanities","volume":"51 2","pages":"185-186"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144162768","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Case conference and para case conference: asking different questions about disability and structural ableism.","authors":"Michele Friedner","doi":"10.1136/medhum-2024-013108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2024-013108","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>What might it mean to change the questions we ask during clinical case conferences and to ask different kinds of questions, both in case conferences and more broadly in our clinics, care conferences and research? How might conducting 'para case conferences' with diverse stakeholders, community members and scholars invigorate conversation and surface different kinds of concerns? By 'para,' I draw from all of the meanings of the prefix, including alongside of, beside, near, resembling, beyond, apart from and abnormal. In this essay, I discuss a 'traditional' hospital-based case conference about a young deaf woman who would like to undergo cochlear implant surgery and I compare it to two 'para case conferences' that I organised with disability studies scholars in the humanities, social sciences and public health, in which we analyzed the same case and had a very different discussion. I argue, drawing on disability studies, medical anthropology and disability ethics scholarship, that we must actively consider and confront the role of structural ableism and the ways that it constrains the kinds of questions and horizons of possibility we imagine for patients and for disabled flourishing more broadly.</p>","PeriodicalId":46435,"journal":{"name":"Medical Humanities","volume":"51 2","pages":"193-196"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144162756","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Correspondence on \"Dating apps as health allies? Examining the opportunities and challenges of dating apps as partners in public health\" by Garcia-Iglesias <i>et al</i>.","authors":"Dan Wohlfeiler, Jen Hecht","doi":"10.1136/medhum-2024-013106","DOIUrl":"10.1136/medhum-2024-013106","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>For public health, any partnership with the private sector raises ethical issues. While programmes to prevent HIV and STI (sexually transmitted infections) have focused on understanding the priorities and cultural mores of diverse communities, they need to develop a similar understanding of how private businesses work. In this commentary, we identify our successes, and challenges, in building ongoing collaborations with dating apps in order to reduce HIV/STI transmission among their users. We have conducted multiple surveys to determine which strategies are most likely to be accepted by both dating app owners and users, and which of those strategies public health experts believe will have the greatest benefit. This research has helped us prioritise strategies to bring to app owners. We have made significant progress in seeing apps and users adopt many of these strategies, particularly in developing optional personal profile fields which allow users to exchange information and make informed choices about their sexual health strategies. Our efforts have also helped apps implement tools to reduce stigmatisation among their users.</p>","PeriodicalId":46435,"journal":{"name":"Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":"301-302"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142510173","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}