“Reimagining Technologies of Care:
Racial Health Equity and Data Justice”
A Sawyer Seminar funded by the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

The Sawyer Seminar on the Comparative Study of Cultures at Rice University aims to interrupt inequitable healthcare practices by bringing key insights and methodologies of the humanities into the analysis, creation and use of healthcare technologies and health datasets. We will examine the current state of healthcare through multiple disciplinary lenses to ask how we might learn from the past to imagine and create better futures.

Starting from the premise that technology is not neutral, medicine is not objective, and healthcare outcomes are not equitable, we will consider how these fields function as responses to and drivers of societal values, including institutionalized and intersectional discrimination. As emerging digital health technologies such as AI gain public attention for the potential harms they may cause or speculative futures they might enable, we will ask, how might the development and impact of these tools end up differently if they are approached through a humanistic lens? We will consider how humanities methods could intervene in the history of technological inequity in health care, and how to foster trust in data-driven health practices among marginalized communities. Through collaborations across the humanities, arts, social sciences, engineering, and computer science, and among academic scholars, healthcare providers, and patient communities, this Sawyer Seminar will develop models for pursuing health equity across race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability, and other forms of difference. Our team of academic scholars and healthcare providers will collaborate with patient communities to propose new approaches to healthcare that place equity, ethics, and patient experiences at the center of medical innovation.

Activities for Academic Year 2024-25

  • Invited speaker series and reading group discussions of case studies on emerging technologies that are reshaping healthcare within clinical settings
  • Workshops with providers and patients from local and national advocacy groups for input on addressing racial health inequity challenges related to technology
  • Professional development to support cross-institutional and interdisciplinary research collaboration
  • Public symposia featuring invited keynotes, research and findings from the Sawyer Seminar


logos of Mellon Foundation, Rice BRIDGE Program, Rice Scientia, Baylor College of Medicine Office of Community Engagement, Dan L Duncan Cancer Center, UTHealth Houston McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics

The Sawyer Seminar is sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional support comes from the Rice Building Research on Inequality and Diversity to Grow Equity (BRIDGE) Program, Rice Scientia Small Conference Fund, the Baylor College of Medicine Office of Community Engagement and Health Equity, the Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center Office of Community Outreach and Engagement, and the UTHealth Houston McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics.



Image: Computer specialist John Smith arranges and examines cannisters of magnetic tape used in the processing of medical data at the National Library of Medicine (c. 1960). Source: https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-101648151-img

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