Mission and History
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston has long recognized the need to educate humane and compassionate health-care providers who are knowledgeable and committed to the highest standards of professional ethics.
Around 2000, campus faculty and administration began considering ways to generate more scholarship in the medical humanities, to bring together and expand the campus' diverse efforts in ethics, humanities, the arts, and spirituality.
The John P. McGovern, M. D. Center for Health, Humanities, and the Human Spirit was formally launched in September, 2004 under the leadership of Dr. Stanley Schultz, Dean of The University of Texas Medical School at Houston.
Housed in the medical school, the McGovern Center is also actively engaged with the School of Public Health, the School of Nursing, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and the School of Dentistry.
The Center also works collaboratively with faculty and students from Rice University, the University of Houston, and the Institute for the Medical Humanities at UTMB.
In addition, teaching, research, and intervention programs work with community organizations including the St. Luke's Episcopal Health Charities, the Museum of Fine Arts and the Houston Symphony Orchestra.
The Center concentrates its work in three basic areas: Medical Humanities, Ethics and Professionalism - Health and the Human Spirit - Medicine, Media and the Arts.
Center Faculty and Associate Faculty teach, conduct research and develop change interventions which aim at personal and workplace transformation.
We work in the gaps: Between the real and the ideal; between mystery and mastery; between molecules and meaning - the fast-paced, scientific/technological world of medicine and the power of the human spirit in healing.
To enhance humanism in medicine, didactic teaching is essential but not sufficent---it is also necessary to nourish the inner life of students and faculty.
As Sir William Osler understood, we must "educate both the head and the heart." The Center's focus is holistic: we aim to educate the emotions as well as the intellect, to nurture the human spirit as well as train the exemplary professional.
