Humanities and Social Sciences
November 19, 2024 2025-09-10 15:36Humanities and Social Sciences
Humanities and Social Sciences Department
The Department is responsible for designing and teaching courses in Humanities and Social Sciences for the medical degree (MBBS-MGHD) at UGHE. One of the University’s major tenets is that a focus on the social aspects of health and healthcare should occupy a central position in medical practice. As a branch of an innovative and ground-breaking health sciences university, this department aims to train a new generation of African medical doctors in approaching care delivery with compassion, cultural humility, and a commitment to equity and social justice.
The importance of the humanities and social sciences in medical education, therefore, cannot be underestimated. In the words of Paul Farmer, they are “re-socialising disciplines” par excellence, i.e. disciplines that allow us to gain a deep and fine-grained knowledge of issues of health and healthcare in a wide variety of past and present societies and local contexts.
About us
Taught by UGHE faculty, with the support of the university’s partner institutions; Harvard University and Vassar College, the first year of the MBBS-MGHD degree, called “Foundations of Global Health Equity” immerses students in this kind of knowledge through a a variety of courses:
- Introduction to Transformative Technology in Health
- History of Health in Africa
- Critical Thinking and Scientific Reasoning
- Academic Writing Skills
- Introduction to Psychology
- Introduction to Sociology
- Introduction to Health Economics
- Medical Anthropology and Social Medicine
- Community-based Training
- Creative Writing and Narrative Medicine
- Communication Skills in Kinyarwanda (for international students)
- Essentials of Oral Communication in English
In addition to the above, first-year students are also introduced to global health principles through the MGHD program modules . These courses consist of:
- Principles of Global Health Equity
- Principles of Health Management
- Principles of Gender EquityPrinciples of Global SurgeryIntroduction to One Health
- Principles of One Health
Key aims
- Equipping medical students with a broad foundational knowledge in the humanities and social sciences, which is relevant to clinical and social medicine, and to global health
- Ensuring that students become critical thinkers who can evaluate arguments and evidence in research and medical practice
- Enabling students to analyze how large-scale historical, political, social, economic and cultural forces influence the present-day health of patients
- Ensuring that students have a clear understanding of ways to avoid plagiarism in academic writing
