The Applied History of Health and Health Sciences (AHHHS) program was established in September 1997 under the auspices of The Center for Health, Culture, and Society at Emory University and is committed to the dual proposition that medical knowledge should be placed in historical and cultural perspective and that historical and cultural methods and context serve as essential tools for research and intervention in the health sciences.

From this perspective, the AHHHS encourages interdisciplinary collaboration and intellectual exchange among collaborators from a variety of disciplinary fields, including social and cultural history, medical anthropology, medical sociology, literature and medicine, philosophy (including medical ethics), all fields of medicine, public health, and nursing. While collaborations are widespread within the health sciences--for instance, among clinicians with different specializations-and across the sciences, the inclusion of social scientists and humanists is less common. Our goal is to encourage and enable collaborations and communication among stakeholders concerned with the history of health and health sciences.