Research Areas and Key Questions

1. Inclusive engineering, design, and data science for health

Technology and architectural design; equitable design of devices and spaces of care; trust and privacy in AI; cultural and ethical implications of digital health

• How can the patient’s story contribute to a more complete picture of their health in a data-driven health care system?
• How can clinical algorithms capture and authentically represent the patient’s lived experience?
• How can medical software and devices be designed to reflect and respect the diverse cultural experiences of patients?

2. Arts in basic, clinical, and public health research

Music and the mind; visual art/media; seeing differently to identify novel problems and propose innovative solutions; literary aesthetics & psychosocial oncology at the end of life

• How can we use the arts and creativity to understand culturally-specific approaches to human health and healing?
• How can we integrate the arts into public health communication to create more effective and trusted messaging?
• How can we learn from the creative arts to better hear and understand diverse patient experiences?

3. Health communication and clinical care at the bedside

Patient narratives; virtual health; community perspectives; diversity of patient experiences; redefining “patient-centered care”; public health communication during disease outbreaks

• How can we preserve and enhance distinctively human ways of interacting with one another in a world that is becoming increasingly automated?
• How can we make healthcare more equitable and inclusive, so that people marginalized by race, ability, gender, language, environment or geography can receive the care they need, in a respectful and dignified form?
• How can healthcare restore trust with members of marginalized communities that have been disrespected or violated by unethical research practices?

4. Health professions education

Diversify health and biotechnology education; identify curricular needs; foster creativity; design trainings; develop novel perspectives

• How can we imagine a future that moves us from reactive medicine to holistic health?
• What does it mean to be a good doctor?
• What does it mean to treat a patient as a person?
• Do the ways we measure health contribute to dehumanization?
• How can we imagine a future vision of health that responds to the demands of climate change?
• How might we understand human flourishing in ways that are not limited to survival or death, and that are not only rooted in biological definitions of vibrancy?

All of these research areas will be united by three throughlines:
ethics; diversity, equity and inclusion; and a creative and expansive approach to translational methods