THE FRANKE HONORS COLLEGE HEALTH AND HUMAN VALUES MINOR
The Health and Human Values minor is making a major difference in the lives of W. A Franke Honors Students.
W.A. Franke Honors HHV minor students and Director, Victor Braitberg
The Health and Human Values (HHV) minor is making a major difference in the lives of W. A Franke Honors Students. Focusing on health and health care delivery in their cultural, historical, aesthetic, and political contexts, HHV offers pre-health and pre-med students’ knowledge and perspectives that enrich and deepen their science-based coursework. Through courses, internship experiences, and research opportunities HHV students are developing their emotional intelligence, strengthening their critical thinking skills, honing their writing abilities, and building their confidence as public speakers and leaders. Igniting a passion for human-centered healthcare, HHV is preparing future health and medical professionals who are patient-centered, ethically focused, intellectually curious, and culturally self-aware.
Unique to the W. A Franke Honors College, Health and Human Values is the only interdisciplinary health humanities minor in Arizona. Honors students apply for admission to HHV during their freshman or sophomore year, completing an introductory, methods-based course as a cohort. A series of three electives chosen from the humanities and social sciences then lead to an individualized internship experience and culminates in a capstone senior seminar. Students have the option of doing their senior thesis in HHV which allows them to choose a faculty advisor drawn from a wide range of social science and humanities disciplines across UArizona.
Because it follows a cohort model, HHV allows students to develop an engaged and supportive community around shared interests in health, medicine, and society. This facilitates networking, learning, and peer mentorship over the course of the minor and after graduation from the program. Over 85% of HHV graduates have successfully gained admission to schools of public health, nursing, medicine, osteopathic medicine, health professional graduate programs and national service programs.
We are especially excited to connect HHV students with alumni whose professional and/or life journeys have taken them deep into the worlds of health care and/or medicine. Our students are eager to learn about your training experiences and career trajectories as well as your personal stories of illness and healing.
If you are an alumnus working in healthcare or medicine, we invite you to get involved by filling out our Volunteer Interest Survey, and please indicate your interest in working with our HHV students. We look forward to connecting with you!
Dr. Victor Braitberg (Ph D. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is the Director of the Health and Human Values minor and serves as Associate Professor of Practice and member of the W. A Franke Honors College Interdisciplinary Faculty. He is a Cultural Anthropologist whose interests reside at the intersection of medical anthropology and Science and Technology Studies. He is broadly concerned with the ethnographic and historical study of the ways that science, technology, and medicine are used as political-economic and ideological resources. His research on telemedicine has traced the linkages between the medical field, telecommunications, defense, and aerospace industries, and government policies to address issues of access to health care for under-resourced and marginalized communities.