Mission and Programs Overview

The Programs and Mission

The Department of History and Philosophy of Medicine consists of four major units: the Academic Programs, the Clendening Library, the Clendening Museum, and the KU Medical Center Archives. The Department unites these programs in its mission to advance understanding and application of ethical, historical and social analysis of health, medicine and healing.

Using the combined resources of the department we strive to teach students and colleagues how historical and social factors influence health and health care; and we inform our teaching through scholarship in the history and philosophy of medicine that merits national recognition.

The Library and Archives act as careful stewards of the extensive historical collections and promote their use and appreciation; while seeking to add some color to the often drab aesthetic of medical practice.

Finally, through our ethics programs we seek to deepen a moral appreciation of medicine's role in healing through ethics education and scholarship in the medical school and ethics consultation in the KU Hospital.