Are you new to Health Humanities? You may find useful topics and keywords by looking at overview titles like The Routledge Companion to Health Humanities, which have useful Tables of Contents.
Research in transdisciplinary fields like the health humanities often means identifying keywords associated with topics you are familiar with from one disciplinary perspective, but perhaps not another. Depending on your topic, you may be seeking articles in disciplines (themselves keywords) with names like Disability Studies, English, Ethics, Ethnic Studies, History, Gender Studies, Health Sciences, Literature, Medical Humanities, Medicine, Philosophy, Religious Studies, or Women's Studies.
As you search, keep an eye out for subject headings associated with articles you find that seem relevant to your topic. For instance, the article "Adaptation of Western Modern Concepts in Modern Korean Architecture in the Early Twentieth Century: Through the Perspective of Science, Efficiency, and Hygiene" appears in the database Web of Science with these author-supplied keywords at the bottom of the item record: Tradition and Modernity, Modern Korean Architecture, Science, Efficiency, Hygiene.
In other cases, standardized subject terms may be applied by metadata specialists, catalogers, or others with similar domain knowledge. In the database Academic Search Complete, the article "Attitudes and Practices of Emergency Medicine Physicians in the Management of Violence Against Women from the Perspective of Medical Ethics: A Qualitative Study" includes the following on the item record: Emergency physicians, Medical ethics, Violence against women, Physicians' attitudes, Medical incident reports.
Some topics, like Global health, may require triangulation between sources in different fields, using keywords like Health equity, Transnational health, Public policy, or Health activism. While authors are often located in departments with a single disciplinary focus, their work may be read and cited by authors in various fields, as is the case with "Operations Research in Global Health: A Scoping Review with a Focus on the Themes of Health Equity and Impact."
While "Health Humanities" is a relatively new disciplinary formation, researchers have been working in this area for decades. Researching Reproductive health, for instance, may mean reviewing research from historians, gender studies scholars, health sciences researchers, and social scientists of every type. The 1978 article "Abortion in France: Women and the Regulation of Family Size 1800-1914," for instance, does not employ the phrases "health humanities" or "reproductive health." The database Historical Abstracts uses these subject terms, instead, for the article: Abortion; Women's sexual behavior; Birth control; Nineteenth century; History).
Health Humanities research draws on many disciplines. As such, multiple disciplines' research databases may offer useful resources. Below is a selection of large general and smaller specialized databases that may be relevant for your project.
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