About Catalyzing H.E.A.L.

Catalyzing H.E.A.L. is a Canadian Institute for Health Research-funded project aimed at collating published health humanities pedagogical scholarship, with a special focus on anti-/decolonial and critical objectives. An interdisciplinary team of eight performed this scoping review, which included resources published globally in English or French (1970-present).

1) How and why are the arts and humanities mobilized in the education and professionalization of healthcare practitioners?

2) Of these existing health humanities mobilizations, which ones are promoting criticality and decoloniality, and how?

3) What critical health humanities and decolonial methods and methodologies are proving to be particularly successful in medical schools and beyond?

Using a system of predetermined keywords to qualitatively code 432 publications, we determined where, why, and how health humanities pedagogies are conducted. Strikingly few publications aimed to disrupt conventional healthcare pedagogies using a critical or decolonial lens - allowing us to shed light on where the ‘critical turn’ has fallen short, and whose perspectives are left behind. Still, we identified several successful strategies to mobilize critical and decolonial health humanities pedagogy: 1) contextualizing local and global determinants of health as informed by colonialism; 2) engaging interdisciplinary leadership teams; and 3) involving Indigenous knowledge holders in all aspects of pedagogy development. Our aim now is to disseminate these findings broadly so our international colleagues can continue the important work of developing groundbreaking, critical, and decolonial health humanities pedagogies.