Mission Statement, Goals, and Objectives

Background and Overview of Program

Mission Statement, Goals, and Objectives

The Master of Science in Media, Medicine, and Health draws on mass media, narratives, and the arts to elevate patient and community voices, create health initiatives and improve health education, and analyze and enhance evidence-based interventions. The program provides rigorous training in both theories and methods of storytelling and social medicine from Harvard Medical School faculty and culminates in a mentored Capstone Project in which students develop a novel health intervention.

The target audience for this program includes physicians, nurses, and health professionals; people in health communications and public relations; health journalists, writers and editors; bioethicists; patient advocates and health educators; people in health administration; people who work for foundations and NGOs; and others who have a stake in communicating the lived experience of illness to a broad audience.

Program graduates will acquire a wide range of knowledge, analytical, and practical skills (along with career advising) necessary for using media and the principles of storytelling to create successful and measurable health programs for the multitude of health crises facing our nation and the world. Graduates will also learn the importance of grounding their stories and projects in science and drawing on evidence-based, rigorously reviewed programs that have shown success. The program will prepare students for a range of jobs in traditional and social media, journalism, foundations, direct health care, health care policy, and community organizations, and provide valuable networking opportunities with experts in various industries and storytelling modalities.

Harvard Medical School has a history of revolutionizing medical education and improving patient care through storytelling. The New Pathway curriculum, which has influenced medical education throughout the world, departed from the traditional division of biological science and patient care and, instead, placed an innovative emphasis on learning medical science by exploring and understanding the lived experiences and stories of patients. The Master of Science in Media, Medicine, and Health extends the storytelling tradition of Harvard Medical School and uses the expertise of our faculty to improve how we understand the root causes of illness and suffering, why our best-intentioned interventions sometimes fail to heal or comfort, how bias and structural racism perpetuate unequal access to care and increased morbidity and mortality, and how those interventions might yet still help patients achieve the highest attainable health with the benefit of a novel media and narrative approach.

This is the only master’s degree program in the United States to offer an evidence-based multidisciplinary storytelling and arts-driven curriculum focusing on health education and interventions to improve health outcomes for the poor and vulnerable. The program will embrace a biosocial approach, as developed in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine (GHSM) by Paul Farmer, Arthur Kleinman, Anne Becker, Jim Yong Kim, and Salmaan Keshavjee. A biosocial approach examines how governments, institutions, and histories intersect to create illness and poor health, especially for those overburdened by poverty and racism. Just as former GHSM Chair Jim Yong Kim transformed the department’s mission from solely conducting research to help others deliver care to a mission that also focuses on the delivery of care itself, this program will guide students in actively highlighting and mitigating inequalities. In this way, the program aligns with the departmental mission.

MMH provides outstanding didactic and mentorship to healthcare professionals to prepare for leadership roles in patient-oriented safety and quality improvement.

The major goal of the program is to provide an innovative comprehensive curriculum that allows participants to pair knowledge and skills with practical experience. The learning model builds upon theoretical knowledge of healthcare quality and safety and expands to include practical applications to assess and improve processes of care. With the opportunity to gain experiential knowledge, students will be well poised to take on leadership and management initiatives