The  Narrative  and Social  Medicine  Track welcomes students who want to investigate the personal, cultural, and meaning-making dimensions of health and health care. How do  individual patients experience pain and suffering? What do clinicians face as they deliver care? What  does it  mean  to be  well?  Students in  this  track grapple    with   questions    that    arise   beyond    the biotechnical explanations of disease, from fundamental   questions    about    embodiment    and mortality to justice questions about poverty and health. Think  of  this track  as  a place  to  wonder about  the nature   of  our   work:   whywe  do   what   we  do   as physicians, what values guide our profession, how our training shapes  us,  and how  to  shape our  futures  in medicine. Think  of  it also  as  a chance  to  learn  about patients’ needs and desires as they face illness and its sequelae.

Narrative Medicine  includes  studies in  the  medical humanities—literary    studies,   history,    philosophy, ethics, and religious studies as they pertain to aspects of health and health care. At Columbia, we include the visual  and  performative arts  as  well. Social  Medicine refers  to studies  of  health policy,  economics,  political aspects  of health,  quality  improvement, and  medical anthropology  and sociology.  We  will sponsor  projects of   humanities  and   ethics   scholarship,   studies  of patients’ or clinician’s personal experiences  of illness or health care, projects in social justice in health/health care,  creative  representations  that pertain  to  health, and policy/politics surrounding health care. Projects in this   track    adopt    creative   means    of    expression, intellectual  and research  methods  from humanities disciplines,   and   social  science   qualitative   research approaches. Mentors and supervisors are drawn from many   units   of  the  university   including  the  health sciences,  the school of  the  arts, arts  and  sciences, the school of journalism, and the law school.

TRACK DIRECTOR

Dr. Rita Charon, M.D.,  PH.D., is  a general internist  and  literary scholar  at Columbia,    Professor   of   MedicineatCUMC,andExecutiveDirector of  the Program   in  Narrative   Medicine.   Dr. Charon graduated from Harvard Medical School  in  1978 and  trained  in internal medicine at the Residency PrograminSocial  Medicine at  Montefiore  Hospital in  New  York. She completed the Ph.D. in the Department of English of Columbia in 1999, writing on the late works of Henry James and on literary analyses of medical texts.