Wake Forest’s MAESTRO program trains medical students in Spanish language and cultural humility, preparing future doctors to bridge communication gaps and deliver empathetic care to Hispanic patients.
Health, Medicine & Humanity
Health, Medicine & Humanity
Health and medicine face challenges that are more complex than ever, shaped by rapid advances in science and technology, fragmented systems of care, and shifting social and environmental conditions. Traditional biomedical approaches alone cannot resolve chronic disease, mental health concerns, addiction, or broken trust in health systems, nor can they address the broader social and structural factors that influence health across communities.
The Health, Medicine, and Humanity (HMH) Initiative begins from the recognition that health is shaped not only by biology, but also by lived experience, place, culture, systems, and story. Grounded in the guiding principle of Pro Humanitate, HMH advances innovative, community-responsive models that place ethics, policy, creativity, and partnership at the heart of research, education, and practice.
Through this work, Wake Forest envisions a future in which science, medicine, ethics, and the humanities and arts are inseparably linked to advance individual and community health, well-being, and shared knowledge.
This vision means:
- Deeply integrating medicine, social sciences, ethics, policy, and the arts/humanities through cross-campus and community partnerships to advance whole-person and whole-community well-being.
- Listening first by recognizing that the most meaningful breakthroughs emerge from relationships of trust, mutual learning, and accountability.
- Joining laboratory and data-driven science with the lived conditions that shape health, from housing and nutrition to belonging, stigma, and environmental context.
- Embedding ethical reflection and policy leadership throughout research, education, and clinical practice so that innovation and implementation advance the health and wellbeing of all
- Strengthening trust in health research and systems through openness, humility, compassion, and reciprocal partnership with patients, communities, and collaborators.
Wake Forest seeks to be recognized nationally and globally as a university in which knowledge, empathy, and ethical reflection converge to transform education, research, and health for the flourishing of all.
Explore the Forest
Programs & Centers
- Department of Health and Exercise Science
- School of Medicine
- Department of Implementation Science
- Translational Science Center (TSC)
- Center for Bioethics, Health, and Society
- Story, Health, & Healing Initiative in Narrative Medicine
- Wake Forest Innovations
- Center for Functional Materials
- Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials
- Center for Literacy Education
- Andrew Sabin Family Center for Environment and Sustainability
- Department of Physics
- Department of Engineering
- Department of Chemistry
- Humanities Institute
- Office of Civic and Community Engagement
- Office of Personal & Career Development
- Program for Leadership and Character
- Center for Redox Biology and Medicine
- Wake Forest Clinical and Translational Science Institute
- Memory Counseling Program (MCP) at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist
- Comprehensive Cancer Center
- Claude Pepper Older Americans Independence Center
- Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center
- Sticht Center for Healthy Aging and Alzheimer’s Prevention
- WFUHS Center for Remote Health Monitoring
- WFUSM CTSI Community Engagement Research Collaborative
- Office of Community Engagement and Research Access
- Public Health Sciences, School of Medicine