Health humanities for inclusive, globally interdependent, supportive and decolonised health professional education: The future is health humanities!

Abstract

To find its place in healthcare that is responsive to global determinants of health and adaptively shape healthcare systems, health professional education (HPE) requires deep and central engagement with arts, culture and the health humanities. In this paper, we overview the trajectory of health humanities and the centrality of humanities scholarship in grappling with coloniality and power as ongoing features of health and healthcare. We then discuss current research that asks how arts and humanities can best be incorporated in HPE. Drawing from a recent Worldwide Universities Network initiative, we set out a framework comprising six domains of learning and 11 graduate capabilities that can be used to implement and evaluate health humanities education. Health humanities offers an invitation for imaginative and joyful innovations in HPE over the next 50 years.