DepartmentHealth Care Administration and Public Health

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Prepare to make change in healthcare through health humanities, public health, or healthcare administration.

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Bellarmine's Health Humanities, Public Health, and Health Care Administration programs prepare students, improve healthcare systems and procedures, and foster compassionate relationships between patients and caregivers.

By appreciating the bigger picture of healthcare and thinking beyond clinical roles, students can enjoy meaningful work in a wide range of careers, from art therapy to epidemiology, from health law to chaplaincy, from social work and community education to medical writing, from healthcare management to bioethical research, and even end-of-life work such as grief counseling or funeral services.

Additionally, public health and health humanities are distinctive majors for pre-med students who want to stand out.

“The first wealth is health”
 —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Healthcare in the United States is overwhelmed by challenges and demand only grows for healthcare professionals of all kinds, including those working outside of clinical spaces. Organizations using creative problem-solving to approach health promotion, disease prevention, health equity, health policy, and health publication and media, will play a vital role in putting the “care” back in US healthcare. These programs prepare students to be on the forefront of that trend.

Completing requirements for these majors equips students with a strong liberal arts undergraduate education. The programs in our department utilize uniquely developed health services courses that, when combined with a variety of courses from departments across the university, create an interdisciplinary experience that not only prepares students for the current world of healthcare, but also for the future of healthcare they will continue improving for coming generations.

HCAPH and the BecVar Artist-in-Residence Program

Mar 8, 2022, 11:39 AM by Aaron Amdall

For nearly two decades, Bellarmine University has been the proud home of a unique interdisciplinary program that brings together the creative arts and health sciences: the BecVar Artist-In-Residence (AIR) Program.  

The Program 

The BecVar AIR program was founded in 2002 through a generous endowment from the late Arthur N. BecVar and the late Jayne BecVar, longtime friends of the university. The mission of the program is to encourage students in creative fields such as fine arts, writing, and digital media to bring their skills to bear in a work or series of works that explores the lives of health care professionals working in clinical or health sciences. The program offers a student stipend each semester, along with funds for supplies. Since its inception, the university has supported one or more student Artists-in-Residence every year. (For more info about the BecVar AIR program, click here).  

The Faculty 

Two key faculty in the Health Care Administration and Public Health (HCAPH) department are Dr. Jessica Hume and Dr. Amy Tudor, who coordinate this program. Drs. Hume and Tudor both specialize in interdisciplinary work that examines the intersection of the humanities and creativity with the patient experience, illness, death and dying.  

Current Student Artists

For the current academic year, Bellarmine University is thrilled to announce that the generous BecVar endowment will support three undergraduate Artists-in-Residence. Here, you can read about these students’ projects, and join us in excited anticipation of their final work.  

Brianna Bragg: Aging Studies and Communication double major, minor in Marketing  

“The BecVar program offers me a valuable opportunity to complement my thesis work and create a multimedia project that showcases these narratives of illness and raises awareness about the presence of health disparities in the local community. My vision is to create a web page that serves as an interactive and educational infographic that showcases narratives of illness. It will be informed by my research and include the narratives I collect. Using a digital platform allows for an engaging product where I can combine text, graphics, and audiovisual components. An additional benefit of the digital medium is its ease of distribution. It has potential to be shared outside of the Bellarmine community for education or advocacy purposes.” 

Logan Funderburg: English 

“I plan to write a collection of poems revolving around the body, and how it is treated among the various stages of life. Here at Bellarmine, and specifically in the senior level health science courses, one is able to see a wide range of bodies; both old and young, fragile and strong, masters of their craft and young aspiring students. We have an eclectic mix here at Bellarmine and it’s begging for a poetic rendering so someone from the outside world can begin to reconcile with the world of health sciences. My goal is just that: to capture the one thing every person can relate to; the body. Specifically, I’d like to see if there is a distinction in the way that we care for bodies as they get older. I’d like to see if there is possibly a difference in the way an anatomy lab talks about a body versus how a student in a geriatric care setting is taught to speak about bodies. I’d also like to capture that innate drive among nursing students to care day in and day out for complete strangers. Perhaps it is the body that serves as the anchor of that connection between nurse and patient. Furthermore, it is possible they know that our bodies are all vulnerable in different ways.” 

Taylor Wortham: Visual Art 

“For the project, I would like to interview students, professors, and people in the field, about what they feel is the most important thing they do. Their knowledge would help shape pictures by showing their own journeys from education to career. From there I would start the process of making the piece. I would like to make paintings of dissections in the style of medical illustrations depicting the results of my interviews. The art would show the hands operating in their subtle and precise ways. I’ve always seen surgery as an art form. Hands attempting to make small incisions, carefully moving through the complex anatomy, are very impressive to me and it seems people outside of the profession don’t think about that aspect very much. The hands would not only serve the purpose of showing the accuracy involved, but also the importance of the student/teacher relationship. I would even like to photograph their hands in the correct positions to get the most accurate references. The way they are positioned, the utensils they use, even the differences between the students and the professor’s techniques; they would all be important to the pieces I would create.” 

Look for the exciting work of these students on campus very soon, or visit the webpaqe for the BecVar AIR program.   

For more information on how to get involved in studies of health and the creative arts, please contact Dr. Jessica Hume at jhume@bellarmine.edu.

Faculty

Jessica Hume, Ph.D., MFA (email)

Jessica HumeJessica C. Hume is an Associate Professor and department chair. Dr. Hume came to healthcare by a circuitous route, graduating from Bellarmine in 2005 with a B.A. in English before moving on to an M.F.A. in creative writing from Spalding University and a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Humanities (with a focus in medical humanities) from the University of Louisville. In 2009, Dr. Hume returned to Bellarmine and served as director of the writing center for two years before transitioning into a full-time position teaching in the Galileo Learning Community for students in the health sciences, which she has held since 2011. In 2021, Dr. Hume became the founding program director for Bellarmine’s Health Humanities program, which was funded by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Dr. Hume has presented in the U.S., the Netherlands, England, and Spain, and published several book chapters.

Her academic interests include breast cancer narratives, illness narratives from marginalized populations, medical history, health disparities in Louisville, teaching compassion to healthcare providers, reducing burnout in healthcare workers, and anything else related to interdisciplinary concepts of health and wellness. She is a creative thinker, a problem solver, an avid crafter, voracious reader, devoted fan of drag, and a collector of aged animals, vintage clothes, and medical ephemera. Away from work, she spends her time chasing her son and her backyard chickens.

Dr. Madeline Tomlinson

Madeline TomlinsonDr. Tomlinson is an Assistant Professor of Public Health and Health Administration. She moved to Louisville to complete her Ph.D. in Epidemiology and MPH focusing on Global Maternal Child Health from the University of Louisville after earning her bachelor's degree in the History of Public Health, Science and Medicine from Yale University. Dr. Tomlinson joined Bellarmine in 2023 after a post-doctoral fellowship with the Envirome Institute at the University of Louisville. Additionally, she taught undergraduate and graduate level classes at the University of Louisville for 4 years as a part-time instructor.

Her research interests are in the areas of maternal and child health, women’s and reproductive health, environmental epidemiology, and global health. Dr. Tomlinson is currently leading a research project in Nigeria working on improving menstrual hygiene for adolescent females. In addition, Dr. Tomlinson collaborates with researchers at the American Heart Association to help mitigate youth vaping and researchers at the University of Louisville to evaluate the health impacts of greener neighborhoods. Dr. Tomlinson’s classes focus on global health, maternal and child health, epidemiologic and statistical methods, and research methods.

Dr. Lyndsey Blair

Lyndsey BlairDr. Blair is an Assistant Professor of Healthcare Administration and Public Health. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Epidemiology and Population Health, a Master of Public Health (MPH) with a focus in Epidemiology, and a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Biology from the University of Louisville. Dr. Blair is joining Bellarmine after more than 5 years working as a Senior Community Epidemiologist with the Lincoln Trail District Health Department. She possesses a strong foundation in both biological sciences and the intricate dynamics of population health. She has carved a niche as a skilled biostatistician, employing advanced statistical methodologies to analyze and interpret epidemiological data.

Dr. Blair's research endeavors are primarily focused on the intersection of environmental exposures, epidemiology, and public health. Currently, her work involves a comprehensive evaluation of radon exposure and its potential impact on breast cancer survival. In addition, Dr. Blair is deeply engaged in the realm of legal epidemiology. She is at the forefront of evaluating the impact of private well water testing laws, specifically those pertaining to arsenic, and their potential correlation with bladder cancer. She has a keen interest in policy-related approaches to addressing environmental health concerns. Her classes focus on advanced statistical methods as well as managerial epidemiologic methods.

Chris Ekstrom, Department Assistant

Experiential Learning

Our internships are individually curated to give each student the opportunity to engage with an organization that matches the student’s field and specific interests. Bellarmine University has strong ties to knowledgeable leaders in local and national and healthcare organizations and other health-related entities. These leaders become mentors for our students during their internships, and they work one-on-one with students to challenge them, support their growth, and provide connections to other outstanding professionals in the field.

Related Student Organizations

  • Students for Health Humanities

Health Humanities: First in Kentucky

Health Humanities is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field, with programs at many other outstanding universities across the country. In 2021, Bellarmine became the first – and only – university in Kentucky to offer a four-year baccalaureate degree in Health Humanities. The launch of this innovative program was funded by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which extends until 2024. For more information about the grant and its implementation in the department, read Bellarmine's news article about our New Interdisciplinary Major in Health, Culture, and Compassion, or WTVQ's news article about Kentucky's first major of its kind.  

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