Integrating World Religions and Global Health into a First-Year Writing Seminar: Challenges and Possibilities

It can be difficult to enroll health sciences students in courses on religion, health, and medicine. Often this is accomplished by offering to meet general education requirements. Seeking to expand this engagement I am designing a first-year writing seminar around the theme “world religions and global health.” At Boston University all first-year students are required to take a two-semester seminar sequence through the writing program. Health sciences students may be particularly interested in a seminar on global health. A challenge is that the seminar must balance the topical material and discussion with writing instruction and practice. To address this students write memos to a fictional global health practitioner about the religious background of a community being engaged in a health promotion intervention. Doing so students gain practice writing in a new genre and must contextualize how the tradition shapes world views and health seeking behaviors.