Health Humanities Council

The Weill Cornell Medicine Health Humanities Council is a group of WCM clinicians, educators, scholars, students, and affiliates dedicated to integrating the arts and humanities into our curriculum and programming.

Our purpose is to provide a central space for collaboration and dialogue between humanities-focused educators, scholars, and clinicians across departments, specialties, and disciplines at WCM. We aim to support engagement with the arts and humanities for Weill Cornell Medicine students and trainees, including mentorship for the Area of Concentration, electives, curricular initiatives, and programming. Using critical inquiry, attention to story, narrative, professional identity development, and meaning-making throughout the career course, we hope to cultivate competencies within humanities disciplines and create better health outcomes for WCM patients and communities.

Rachel Kowalsky, M.D., MPH
Lead for the Health Humanities

Dr. Rachel Kowalsky is associate professor of clinical emergency medicine and pediatrics, and site director for the NewYork-Presbyterian emergency medicine residency’s academic practice track in the humanities. She is also a Pushcart-nominated author whose fiction and essays can be found in the Missouri Review, Atticus Review, The Intima, and other journals and anthologies. Her academic writing can be found in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA Pediatrics, and the American Journal of Bioethics.