BEHH 5015: The Top Ten Legal Cases in the History of Bioethics
: This course is intended to introduce learners to landmark legal cases in bioethics. We will use these cases to help learners understand how the cases arose out of medical, historical, and sociological/cultural themes, explore legal concepts important to medical practice and bioethics, and identify why these cases remain significant today. We will then apply what we have learned to novel or emerging ethical issues in the present. Many of the cases raise issues relevant to both clinical medicine and public/population health and addressing intersections and differences between medical and public health ethics and law is a second theme of the class
BEHH 5210: The Art of Observation (In person):
The Art of Observation is designed to sharpen participants’ perceptual and analytical skills, which are essential for excellence in clinical practice in dentistry, medicine, and other professional fields. The goals are to increase compassion and empathy, encourage tolerance for ambiguity and diversity, recognize biases in interpretation and foster reflection and honest communication using the arts to gain these skillsets.
BEHH 5211: The Art of Listening (In person):
The Art of Listening is an innovative course that explores the profound intersection of musical and clinical listening skills to enhance practice in medicine, dentistry, and other healthcare fields. Participants will explore how musical narratives unfold, mirroring the way patient histories are constructed and understood in clinical settings. Special attention is paid to the emotional and cultural aspects of music, encouraging students to reflect on how these elements influence perception and interpretation in healthcare. This approach fosters empathy and cultural competence, crucial attributes in today's diverse healthcare landscape.
BEHH 5212: Pain & Dentistry in the History of Western Art:
This interdisciplinary course explores the intersection of pain and dentistry through the lens of Western art history since 1500, examining how dental pain has been uniquely represented in artistic works while investigating broader themes of human suffering, inequality, and medical practice. Through a blend of asynchronous and synchronous learning over 8 sessions, students engage with historical and contemporary perspectives on dental medicine, considering how past representations and understandings of dental pain inform modern dental practice. The course combines reflective writing, collaborative Wiki development, and group presentations to help students develop historical fluency in dental practice and patient experience that they can apply to contemporary dental medicine.
BEHH 5217:
Medical Improv
(In Person): This course will introduce students to medical improv--a training technique that uses improvisational theater exercises to help healthcare professionals develop better communication skills, empathy, and adaptability when interacting with patients and colleagues.
BEHH 5218 : Grief, Loss, and Healing:
Explore the human experience of grief and loss through clinical, embodied, and creative lenses. Learn to recognize unprocessed grief in patients, colleagues, and yourself, and develop skills to support healing and resilience. Grounded in research and reflective practice, this course integrates neuroscience, body-based exercises, and expressive mediums—including literature, visual art, music, and film—to deepen understanding and cultivate compassion in professional and personal contexts.
BEHH 5312:
Clinical Ethics Case Consultation
(Synchronous Online): This course will introduce students to the work of case consultation via practicing working through clinical cases. It will require reading, writing, and group discussion.
BEHH 5314: A Tale of Two Deaths:
Debates in Uniform Determination of Death : This course examines the ethical, legal, and social controversies that persist despite decades of attempts to standardize how we determine death in the United States. It explores why the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA), despite its aim at clarity, has not resolved disputes about what constitutes death, and how these tensions surface in clinical encounters. Beginning with the Harvard criteria and the evolution toward neurological standards for determining death, we explore a trajectory that reveals how unresolved epistemic questions continue to unsettle both conceptual frameworks and bedside practice. Using contemporary cases and emerging scholarship, we will consider why disagreement endures and what revisions might mean for us all.
BEHH 5315: The Ethics of Health Communication:
This course introduces practical communication strategies for promoting trust in health care, improving patient outcomes, and reducing stigma and alienation. Participants will explore the challenge of inadequate health literacy and learn about health literacy best practices. They will discuss strategies for improving conversations around bad news and hard decisions, create scripts for navigating cultural preferences about health information, and practice avoiding stigma and alienation in chart noting. The course will close with a discussion of the benefits and limitations of AI in health care settings. Discussions will include vulnerability, the nature of trust, the role of authority, and the significance of intellectual humility. Participants will read primary source.
BEHH 5316: Ethical Issues at the End of Life:
This course will engage with common ethical issues faced by clinicians, patients, and families when patients are at the end of life. Participants will study how social structures around dying create ethical challenges, how patients’ values and preferences can be identified and documented to support care planning, how to respect patient preferences in the face of changing medical circumstances, how to navigate inadequate knowledge about the patient, and how to respond when surrogate decision-makers fail to fulfill their responsibilities. Topics of readings and discussion will include capacity assessment, surrogate decision-making, unrepresented patients, and withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment. The aims of the course are to help participants navigate ethical challenges at the end of life both in the course of their professional work and also with their families and friends. Participants will write responses to case write-ups and draft discussion plans for family meetings.
BEHH 5317: Beyond Best Interest: Capacity, Authority, and the Ethics of Adolescent Decision-Making:
This course examines why the standard tools relied on in pediatric ethics, including Best Interest, the Harm Principle, and the Zone of Parental Discretion, become increasingly strained in cases involving adolescents. While these frameworks offer helpful guidance in early childhood, they often fail to account for the moral relevance of adolescents’ emerging autonomy or the practical realities of entrenched parental authority in clinical encounters. Through case-based discussion, this course explores where these models break down and examines what emerging literature suggests about alternative approaches to addressing capacity and more meaningfully honoring an adolescent’s voice.
BEHH 5350: Narrative Principles and Practices in Healthcare:
This 1-credit course introduces students to the intellectual and clinical discipline of narrative work in healthcare through both theoretical foundations and practical applications. Through structured workshops and in-person instruction, students develop skills in close reading of texts and writing, learning how to apply narrative principles to healthcare settings. The course aims to help healthcare professionals better understand and work with the stories and narratives that are fundamental to medical practice.
BEHH 5351:
Reflecting Writing and Practice
(Synchronous Online): Reflective writing is an essential component of narrative medicine, the practice of using storytelling, close reading and listening to understand a patient's experience and provide empathetic, whole-centered care. This 1-credit course allows health care professionals to study some of the tenets of narrative medicine and turn an idea into a story.
BEHH 5410:
Research Methods in the Health Humanities
(Asynchronous Online): This immersive course explores the intersections of humanities and healthcare through methodological inquiry, focusing on three core methodologies: narrative methods, visual and material methods, and ethnographic methods. Its central goal is to foster a deeper understanding of how humanities-based research methods can illuminate the complex experiences of health, illness, and healing in contemporary society.
BEHH #:
Behind the Data: Methods for Ethical and Equitable Human Research
(Synchronous Online): This course will focus on selected topics in the practical and ethical dimensions of conducting meaningful and actionable empirical research in human health. Students will learn to develop more robust surveys, use mixed methods to incorporate storytelling, and learn about the importance of community connection. They will be exposed to methods designed to address policy issues, and will develop a clear understanding of why it matters how we recruit and who makes it into our studies.
BEHH #:
Art, Advocacy & Healthcare
(In Person): The course will explore the intersection of arts, advocacy and research to create a health care experience that is equitable, safe, and compassionate for all.
BEHH 5450:
Addressing Health Stigma in Social Contexts
(Synchronous Online): This interdisciplinary course examines health stigma in social contexts, providing students with tools to understand why health stigma is prevalent and how it can be addressed. Through in-person seminars, students learn to analyze health stigma and develop explanations for its persistence while exploring potential interventions and solutions.
BEHH 5851: Autonomy & Ethical Risk: Protecting Autonomy & Exploring Rights at End-of-Life:
This fully asynchronous course invites students to engage deeply with pressing topics in clinical ethics, examining the moral and practical complexities of healthcare through shared reflection and discussion. This course includes 7–10 recorded Ethics Grand Rounds sessions, complemented by curated readings and interactive discussion boards. Readings will span foundational texts in clinical ethics, contemporary commentaries, and personal narratives that illuminate real-world ethical dilemmas.  After completing the assigned materials, students will participate in online discussions with peers and instructors to analyze counterarguments, draw parallels to clinical practice, and explore ethical tensions, constraints, and benefits. At the conclusion of each part, students will submit a reflective synthesis, articulating key insights, personal takeaways, and the ways in which the material has shaped their clinical perspective, professional development, or ethical reasoning.
Part 1: Ethics of Capacity, Consent, & Coercion • Analyze the clinical and ethical dimensions of assessing decision-making capacity in patients. • Evaluate strategies for protecting and promoting autonomy among individuals with diminished or fluctuating capacity.
Part 2: Ethics at the End of Life • Examine ethical tensions surrounding requests for, and objections to, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID). • Appraise the moral and emotional complexities associated with end-of-life care, including decisions about organ donation.
BEHH 5852: Culture & Ethics in Care: Ethical Responsibilities in Caring for Diverse and Vulnerable Populations:
This fully asynchronous course invites students to engage deeply with pressing topics in clinical ethics, examining the moral and practical complexities of healthcare through shared reflection and discussion. This course includes 7–10 recorded Ethics Grand Rounds sessions, complemented by curated readings and interactive discussion boards. Readings will span foundational texts in clinical ethics, contemporary commentaries, and personal narratives that illuminate real-world ethical dilemmas. After completing the assigned materials, students will participate in online discussions with peers and instructors to analyze counterarguments, draw parallels to clinical practice, and explore ethical tensions, constraints, and benefits. At the conclusion of each part, students will submit a reflective synthesis, articulating key insights, personal takeaways, and the ways in which the material has shaped their clinical perspective, professional development, or ethical reasoning.
Part 1: Caring Amid Moral Complexity: Culture, Conflict, and Compassion • Identify and analyze sources of moral distress within healthcare teams and their impact on professional integrity. • Critically reflect on the ethical responsibilities inherent in shared decision-making and the provider–patient relationship across cultural and moral contexts.
Part 2: Pediatrics • Explore ethical frameworks used in adult versus pediatric clinical contexts. • Assess the ethical and emotional challenges that shape decision-making for pediatric patients and families
BEHH 5853: Community Health Ethics:  Equity, Stigma and Systemic Barriers:
This fully asynchronous course invites students to engage deeply with pressing topics in clinical ethics, examining the moral and practical complexities of healthcare through shared reflection and discussion. This course includes 7–10 recorded Ethics Grand Rounds sessions, complemented by curated readings and interactive discussion boards. Readings will span foundational texts in clinical ethics, contemporary commentaries, and personal narratives that illuminate real-world ethical dilemmas. After completing the assigned materials, students will participate in online discussions with peers and instructors to analyze counterarguments, draw parallels to clinical practice, and explore ethical tensions, constraints, and benefits. At the conclusion of each part, students will submit a reflective synthesis, articulating key insights, personal takeaways, and the ways in which the material has shaped their clinical perspective, professional development, or ethical reasoning.
Public Health and Policy • Investigate how social stigma influences healthcare access and outcomes for vulnerable populations.  • Evaluate the ethical and political dimensions of policy decisions that shape public health and medical practice.
BSBT 6065: Case Studies in Responsible Conduct of Research:
Anyone conducting research using federal funding must study RCR. You’ll learn expectations and regulations that permeate science. You’ll understand the consequences of violations to individuals and society. We’ll explore misconduct through interactive video, written and video case studies, and other engaging activities.
BEHH 6655:
Public Health Ethics
(Synchronous Online): This course offers an introduction to public health ethics, covering fundamental concepts and the ethical challenges arising from public health's core functions, while also providing practical tools and diverse case studies to help learners analyze and resolve ethical dilemmas in public health practice and policy.
PUBH 6655: Public Health Ethics (Online Synchronous):
This course offers an introduction to public health ethics, covering fundamental concepts and the ethical challenges arising from public health's core functions, while also providing practical tools and diverse case studies to help learners analyze and resolve ethical dilemmas in public health practice and policy.