At the Intersection of Medicine and Meaning

Modern medicine can diagnose and treat disease with remarkable precision. Yet for many people, illness raises questions beyond the physical — about meaning, purpose, relationships, and what it means to live well in the face of uncertainty.

At Yale School of Medicine, Benjamin Doolittle, MD, MDiv, professor of medicine (general medicine), pediatrics, and divinity, has spent his career exploring care at the intersection of medicine and theology. A physician, pastor, and educator, he recently published the book Theology and Medicine in Conversation: How the Healing Happens, co-authored with Yale Divinity School's Mark Heim.

In a Q&A, Doolittle discusses his path into this work, what it means to think beyond “cure,” and how clinicians can approach healing more holistically.

I’ve always been drawn to big questions — what makes life meaningful, what makes life important, and what we can do to make the world better. Medicine offered a tangible way to act on those questions, caring for people one at a time. But those deeper questions never went away. In many ways, theology provides a foundation for that work, connecting medicine to ideas of meaning, purpose, and care. For me, bringing the two together has been a way to connect virtue with action and to ground a broader understanding of what it means to care for others.

Cure is often about managing or eliminating disease, and modern medicine does that remarkably well. But healing is something broader. It involves the whole person, including relationships, purpose, and a sense of meaning. In caring for patients with addiction, for example, you can prescribe medication that reduces cravings, but real healing involves reconciliation within oneself, repairing relationships, and restoring purpose. Sometimes that looks like small but meaningful changes, like being able to show up for family again.

I actually think medicine is extraordinary, and I’m careful about criticizing it too quickly. We’ve made incredible advances — people are living longer, and diseases that were once fatal are now manageable. At the same time, we ask a great deal of medicine and of clinicians. We often expect physicians to address not only physical illness, but also emotional and even spiritual needs. In some ways, we ask more from physicians than we would from anyone else. So the issue isn’t that medicine is failing — it’s that the scope of care is broader than medicine alone can fully address.

The course has developed a real energy around it, bringing together students from medicine, divinity, nursing, public health, and beyond. What’s been especially meaningful is seeing how it shapes people’s paths. For instance, some go on to pursue medicine or research, while others rethink how they approach care. I think it resonates because people are already asking these questions about meaning, purpose, and what it means to care for others. The course simply creates a space where those questions can be explored more intentionally and across disciplines.

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