PUBLIC WRITING AND PUBLIC HEALTH

The recent racial and economic disparities of the COVID-19 pandemic and the framing of violent policing in the United States as a “public health crisis,” have sharpened the need for informed activist writing in the public sphere. This course will train student to participate in these public conversations. Although the constraints of writing for public-facing venues are many (time, tone, length, presentation of findings), the need for writers with cultural and narrative fluency in medicine is difficult to overstate. Building on the skills developed in the first term of the narrative medicine program, students in this one-credit elective course will study and practice how to write from qualitative research for a public audience. Over three weeks, we will delve into the scholarly and public writing of academics whose work moves between the social and the scientific, studying the rhetorical choices in both kinds of writing, and observing effective techniques for deep engagement and strategies for of-the-moment occasional pieces, fiction, documentary, and long-form journalism. A visit with a climate change and health reporter will provide an opportunity to ask questions about the journalistic practices that link these fields. The class will consider writerly decision-making in times of urgency and crisis, and help students build sustainable research practices that can be called upon in such times. We will also discuss systems for self-editing and responding to editorial comments and pressures. The final project for the course will be a researched op-ed or short essay on a current health-related matter and an accompanying pitch to a national magazine or newspaper.

This is a 1-credit Special Topics elective designed for any interested Narrative Medicine M.S. students as well as graduate students from programs such as SPS Bioethics and others, space permitting. It fulfills the core Narrative Medicine program objective of bridging the scholarly/academic realm and public discourse in regard to medicine and public health, while addressing pressing contemporary issues. While the M.S. degree requirements include a creative writing core course, there are currently no offerings which build public-facing journalistic writing skills. It thus addresses a gap in the curriculum, advancing program learning outcome #5: “Graduates will demonstrate comprehension of local, national, or global application of narrative medicine theories and practices.” Such application and implementation is a core mandate