Project 457358

Catalyzing H.E.A.L. Medicine is a knowledge creation project: it builds new evidence about Critical Health Humanities (CHH) to innovate medicine and healthcare. Anchored in a 2020 shortlisted (final 12) New Frontiers in Research Fund application (NFRFT-2020-00222) for $12,000,000, Catalyzing H.E.A.L. Medicine is focused on macro/meso-level innovations for healthcare services and systems (medical education and beyond). Our project focuses on healthcare workforces (future and current physicians). By synthesizing qualitative, quantitative, and multi-method evidences about how CHH have transformed medicine and healthcare globally, we will provide knowledge users in Canada (faculties of medicine, national arts associations, and medical/health organizations) with high-quality, timely, accessible, and relevant knowledge about CHH. CHH is a growing but undertheorized discipline in Canada with potential to inform Quadruple Aims in health training, in policies and practices, including improving patient care, care-provider wellness, health outcomes, and health equity. CHH can address social health determinants for Canada's most marginalized. Patients from northern, rural/remote geographies and/or who are Indigenous; those who are queer or experiencing poverty; those who are body-diverse, racialized and immigrant; and those with addictions and/or mental illness have worse health outcomes than white, hetero, fit/able-bodied, neurotypical, or urban Canadians. Medical students and professionals also experience burnout, exhaustion and stress: this is especially true for Indigenous, female-identified, queer and differently-bodied physicians and those in/from marginalized, underclassed, sociocultural geographies. Canada needs new evidence about equity and transforming medicine through Critical Health Humanities. We will deliver that evidence. Our research concludes by identifying gaps about decolonizing practices in global knowledge, gaps our team will work to address in the future.