Where Art Meets Medicine: Aspiring Doctor Roots Undergraduate Training in the Humanities

Madelyn Quinn’s journey to medical school begins with degrees in health humanities and public health, fields she hopes will make her a more well-rounded physician and scholar.

Madelyn Quinn has fond memories of the ceramics studio in the basement of her family’s home. They would use it every year to make Christmas ornaments for loved ones. Her entire family found an outlet through art.

So, they were shocked when Quinn decided she wanted to become a doctor.

“My mom is a teacher, and my dad works on railroads, so they didn’t understand what I wanted to do or why I wanted to do it,” she said. “I’ve been interested in medicine since eighth-grade biology.”

Years later, Quinn is the first health humanities and public health double major at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS) and is set to graduate in the spring of 2025. She said both programs have allowed her to explore unique aspects of modern medicine, gain a broader perspective, and use her artistic background in her education, all skills she believes will benefit her in medical school someday.

“Health humanities has a more holistic view on medicine, and the same is true in public health,” she said. “We’re looking at the larger picture and the societal infrastructures that play a role in medicine.”

Quinn originally came to MCPHS as a premedical health studies student. However, within her first year, she realized she wanted something different out of her undergraduate experience.

“I wanted a degree with more personality,” she explained. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, undergraduate humanities students have one of the country’s highest medical school acceptance rates.

The coursework also allowed Quinn to lean into her artistic upbringing. “I love to read and have particularly enjoyed studying narrative medicine. Many of my projects have focused on how we translate medicine into writing or art then communicate that with the public.”

While working on her health humanities capstone project this year, Quinn found a need for more research volume in the field, which started gaining popularity in the early 2000s.

“It was hard to imagine getting into a field that isn’t as established yet, especially in the Northeast, but I want to help it grow,” Quinn said.

That’s when her professor, Dien Ho, PhD, suggested she attend the Health Humanities Consortium Conference in Phoenix. MCPHS was one of the event’s sponsors.

“I was excited to see how other humanities programs work and what people pursue with this degree,” Quinn said. She was the only representative from MCPHS who attended in person.

Quinn talked with other students and faculty members—some of whom were just a few years older than her—from across the country about their experiences and her options for graduate school. She also met one of her health humanities idols, Dr. Eric Avery.

“He’s a well-known doctor in Texas, but he’s also an artist whose works are displayed all over the world,” she said. “I got a spot in a small workshop where he taught us how the same techniques for analyzing art can also be used to analyze physical injuries. It was super interesting.”

Quinn is in the final year of her undergraduate education. After the Consortium, she feels invigorated to bolster the health humanities program at MCPHS and connect with other programs in the area.

“I’m working with Dr. Ho to create a workshop series with other institutions, like Northeastern and Boston College, which both have humanities minors,” she said. “I want students to connect and explore different aspects of this field.”

Her undergraduate work is only the beginning of Quinn’s academic journey. She’s exploring Master of Public Health programs to earn someday a combined Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy—four years of medical school and four years of a PhD in public health.

“I am still interested in medicine, but studying health humanities and public health has taught me how important it is to make systematic changes in our healthcare system,” Quinn said. “These programs touch the hard topics and address the humanity that often gets lost in the hard sciences. I know I’m more sensitive and open to people because of them.”

Check out these episodes of 'The Secret to Living to 200' to learn more about health humanities and public health.