Gold Humanism Honor Society

Past Initiatives

2022 Healing the Heart of Healthcare Conference

2022 Healing the Heart of Healthcare logo with a red heart and the words 2022 Gold Humanism Virtual Conference | reimagining how we listen, connect, and collaborate

In the year of its 20th anniversary, the Gold Humanism Honor Society was delighted to host the 2022 Healing the Heart of Healthcare Virtual Conference, aimed at reimagining how we listen, connect, & collaborate. The conference was held live, virtually May 5-6 with a special GHHS Day on May 7. Last year’s conference built on the 2022 International Initiative of the same name. Speakers included Dr. Jillian Horton, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, Dr. Ruby Mendenhall, and many more.

2022-23 GHHS International Initiative

The heart of healthcare is humanism. And true humanistic care – compassionate, collaborative, scientifically excellent care – depends on seeing each other’s humanity. The humanity of the patients we care for, and our own humanity, which has frequently been neglected through the difficult, seemingly endless hours of this pandemic. Without humanism, without deep understanding and respect for each other, we all suffer. Our mental health is at stake. Our connection to each other is at risk.

We encourage your work in this multi-year initiative to lean on the power of community building, storytelling and health-related narratives (art, music, film, writing, dance, etc.), mentorship programs (doctors and educators to medical students, but also students to their docs!), and more. Through these projects, we hope to fortify our relationships, highlight a variety of perspectives across the continuum of healthcare, and gaze forward to a brighter future.

Learn more about the Healing the Heart of Healthcare International Initiative. You can also hear thoughts from GHHS leaders in this episode of the Gold Connection podcast.

2020-21 GHHS National Initiative

The 2020-21 GHHS National Initiative hopes to encourage GHHS members to use their leadership roles to start or extend conversations about racism and its impact on medicine/healthcare in their local communities and beyond, to create space for grieving, processing, and bearing witness around this topic, or to take action in one of many powerful ways that humanism can begin to heal.

Many schools and chapters have already begun efforts around the topic of systemic racism and the 2020-21 GHHS National Initiative, Humanism and Healing: Structural racism and its impact on medicine, can act as a portal to honor and extend what is already being done.

GHHS staff encourages our chapters to remind the world that humanity, through the deepest compassion for one another, through personal narratives, education, and promoting accountability, can begin to slowly foster healing. Read the full announcement HERE.

2021 Humanism & Healing Virtual Conference

After an incredibly difficult year of seclusion from our GHHS peers, it’s time to come together to share the work our chapters have done for the 2020-2021 National Initiative, Humanism and Healing: Structural racism and its Impact on medicine.

Learn more about the Humanism & Healing Virtual Conference. You can also hear thoughts from GHHS staff and three members of the GHHS Advisory Council in the first episode of the Gold Connection podcast. View a list of 2020 Participants.

See what other chapters are doing:

Cooper Medical School of Rowan University (CMSRU): Together with their Librarians, GHHS members at Rowan compiled a Cultural Diversity and Anti-Racism Libguide. The GHHS chapter at Rowan chose to pursue an anti-racism library collection because they believe that education on racism in medicine and society is essential to combating it. They also believe literature, music, or visual art that explores the perspectives and lives of minority groups can help engender the empathy and compassion that is so essential to being a physician.

As part of their work, CMSRU chapter of the Gold Humanism Honor Society also debuted an anti-racism library collection housed in the CMSRU medical library. With works of nonfiction, fiction, memoirs, essays and poetry, they hope to create a living collection that will grow and add new perspectives on race, racism and especially race in medicine.

View the Cultural Diversity and Anti-Racism Libguide HERE.

View the anti-racism library collection HERE.

View the collection dedication for this work

Guide on how to open conversations about difficult topics with optimal effectiveness:

Humanism in medicine often requires a period of flexing muscles we may not always have used in the past. Sometimes, just the act of bringing awareness to certain topics affecting both our professional and personal interactions may evoke strong reactions that can impede our ability to receive such insight and/or feedback. The Gold Humanism Honor Society recognizes both the necessity of addressing structural racism within our healthcare communities and workspaces in an open and nonjudgmental environment, and yet also appreciates the sensitive nature of having these discussions due to their potential to create defensiveness, divisiveness, or even greater power imbalances. Access a guide on how to open conversations about difficult topics with optimal effectiveness.

Veterans Gold Health Initiative 2019

This Quality Improvement Project addresses healthcare disparities through the identification of veteran status and associated risk for unique employment-related illnesses.

Our overarching goal for this initiative is to encourage physicians to correctly identify those veterans already in their patient panels, and eventually become comfortable obtaining the necessary history to provide effective healthcare using all applicable sources available for this population. View a list of 2018 Participants.

  • Academic and community clinicians provide a large percentage of healthcare for veterans, and the trend towards community care will continue to accelerate due to outsourcing by the VA.
  • Standard medical education does not provide ample understanding of the unique healthcare needs of service members and their families, both during and after their tour of service.
  • A lack of knowledge by community providers about how to access services specifically available for this population leads to many missed opportunities for care.
  • The lack of education on the topic of veteran’s health leads to a failure to identify and effectively care for our service members living side by side with civilian neighbors.

Resources:

Veterans’ Healthcare: The Role of Community Medicine

AAMC webinar: Taking a Military History: Four Critical Questions

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

Medical Students Initiate Academic Program to Improve Veterans’ Healthcare

The Unasked Questions

International Chapter Pilot

Gold Humanism Honor Society (GHHS) is pleased to announce that three chapters from around the world have joined the over 160 existing GHHS chapters. These schools were chosen in 2019 as part of a three-year pilot project to expand GHHS internationally.

To learn more about this pilot, please click here.