The Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine (CBSSM) is expanding to include arts, humanities, and social sciences.  Nothing about our service, education, or research work in bioethics or social sciences/decision sciences is changing. You can count on us for the ethics consultation, research expertise, mentorship and community that you always have. We are now a larger organization, inclusive of more disciplines and programs, including the former Center for the History of Medicine, the Medical Arts Program, and the Program in Health, Spirituality and Religion. The new Center will also be a home for students in the Medical School Paths of Excellence in Medical Humanities and Ethics.

Our new name reflects this new, roomier “crowded table.” For now, we are called the Center for History, Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Ethics in Medicine (CHHASSEM), though we are considering additional names as well. 

CHHASSEM has five area programs instead of two, each with their own faculty director: Michigan Bioethics (Dir: Prof. Kayte Spector-Bagdady), Medical Social Sciences (Dir: TBD), History of Medicine and Public Health (Dir: Dr. Laura Hirshbein), Arts and Medicine (Dir: TBD), Medical Humanities (Dir: TBD). Stay tuned for more updates to our website.

We are building a welcoming home where we center the insights and lessons of history, ethics, humanities, social sciences, and the arts to deepen our understanding of health, illness, and care delivery, and to amplify the promise of biomedicine. Put another way, CHHASSEM asks an aspirational question: “What could healthcare become?”

We invite members of the U-M community to co-create this new space with us as a place where we revive the heart of medicine and reimagine the experience of healing and healthcare work.