Requirements for the Certificate in Health Studies
Students should declare their intent to pursue the Health Studies Certificate to the Health Studies Coordinator and with the Registrar’s Office by the beginning of their junior year. Students who successfully complete all of the requirements stated below will be issued a Certificate in Health Studies which will be awarded upon graduation from the College and will be recorded on their transcript.
The certificate in Health Studies requires:
1. successful completion of Introduction to Health Studies (HEST 201: Introduction to Health Studies);
2. successful completion of four other approved courses on health related topics taken in at least two academic departments;
3. successful completion of an internship or service learning course that involves a health-related field experience. This can be counted as one of the 4 required electives or may be done as a non-credit experience with approval from the Health Studies Coordinator;
4. successful completion of a health studies senior seminar (HEST 400: Health Studies Senior Seminar).
The goals of the health studies certificate program are as follows:
1. To provide Dickinson students a useful education by utilizing the broad spectrum of expertise available in a liberal arts college environment to advocate for an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and resolving health issues, and related policy and management issues
2. To train citizen leaders by creating opportunities for Dickinson students to articulate their findings and concerns on health care issues in a knowledgeable way and by providing community service opportunities for students to contribute to the improvement of the community’s health;
3. To create opportunities for faculty and staff contributions to health care solutions through teaching, research, and service.
Purpose, Goals, and Benefits of the Health Studies Certificate Program
To understand the challenges of maintaining the health of an individual, a community, or a society it is important to clearly understand the meaning of health and the complexity and inadequacies of systems designed to safeguard individual, group, societal, and global health.
The intent of the Health Studies Initiative is to better enable Dickinson College and its faculty and students to enter this forum in a focused manner for the purpose of contributing to these solutions. We believe that the liberal arts focus at Dickinson College will allow us to contribute to the political and social contextualization of understandings of health care – a process that will help to democratize discussions of health and illness by opening up debate so that it includes more than just medical experts and health care managers. Health can only be understood in the context of the ways in which people live their lives. The Health Studies Initiative recognizes this and strives to make it a fundamental component of any health program.
Developing such an interdisciplinary program in health studies will also allow Dickinson to connect with, and contribute to, the burgeoning nation-wide development of interdisciplinary programs in medical humanities (most often based in medical schools) and in health, illness, and disability studies (based in undergraduate and graduate schools). These are "exploding" interdisciplinary fields, accompanied by a plethora of conferences, fellowships, new journals, and research centers. (Penn State Hershey's Medical Humanities Department is a leader here.) The kind of creative interplay that will occur between a health certificate studies program and these growing fields and programs will benefit both faculty and students at Dickinson.
Strategies to resolve health care problems have routinely focused on fixing existing financing and delivery models. To date these solutions have only worked in the short run. Given the complexity of the issues, sustainable solutions require the development of holistic models of social, educational and health related activities and services. These models emerge when community organizations and individuals actively engage in collaborative processes focused on improving health outcomes for all community members. This is difficult work requiring contributions from a broad array of community representatives capable of viewing the issues and problems from the perspectives of multiple disciplines. Dickinson College can contribute to this process in a meaningful way. By taking a leadership role on this policy issue, Dickinson College can successfully meet one of the principle tenets of Dickinson’s founder, Dr. Benjamin Rush: “…providing a useful education, training citizen leaders and being unafraid to speak out on topics of importance.” This contribution can be immediate as well as on-going. It has the potential to affect our immediate community and communities throughout the world.