What connects us? How do the ties that bind us shape our health, our communities, and our futures?

Networks – social bonds, kinship structures, blood vessels, digital platforms, data, cultural systems, neural pathways, transportation links – hold us together and connect our world. Networks do not stay still. They move. Driving structures, relationships, and systems, networks are conduits of the collective. Families of origin and families of choice... a colleague at a happy hour telling you about an opportunity…the team of advocates, healthcare providers, patients, and families collaborating to manage health conditions…the blood vessels, to the tiniest capillary, carrying oxygen to each cell in our bodies…. as we learned in 2020, viral networks, drawing us all together in unease…. the metro system connecting neighborhoods across cities…the marriage of letters, words, and pauses that gives a poem its poetry and language its flavor…the data flow that powers social media…contact tracers tracking an infectious disease…flow charts and radial diagrams…the social media networks sharing health information and shaping public opinion…. telemedicine and the networks that help deliver humanitarian medical support…. and machine learning that builds data-focused networks impacting health and wellness outcomes.

Networks are dynamic, interactive, and influential. Network-builders and analysts – whether your favorite influencer or an AI engineer – are architects of connectivity, and networks can help us better understand biological, sociological, technological, and cultural phenomena. In the field of health, the significance of networks is often underestimated, though they play a crucial role in the spread of information, access to resources, and patterns of care that impact the health and well-being of diverse communities.

This theme builds upon our previous year’s theme of Lore, for networks transmit stories, knowledge, and wisdom traditions. Networks pass on lore. This year we ask: What connections, relationships, and systems are transmitted through social ties, digital platforms, biological systems, and infrastructure? How do networks influence how people navigate illness and healing? How do digital networks transform the way we understand, access, and deliver healthcare? We are especially interested in the interdependence between narratives and data. How do personal stories and big data intersect? What role do language and communication patterns play in shaping our understanding of health, influencing interactions, and impact health knowledge and trust across diverse communities? How do social media networks and online communities influence health behaviors, spread information, and shape public health discourse?

We encourage innovative approaches that challenge conventional understandings of networks and propose new frameworks for conceptualizing interconnectedness in our complex health ecosystem. We are especially interested in projects that use the following to construct and analyze networks: 1) interdisciplinary integration (combining methods from humanities, social sciences, computer sciences, and other fields), 2) novel data sources (i.e. oral histories, lore and storytelling, marginalia, music, murals and other visual arts), 3) interactive visualizations (allowing users to interact with data to make clear networks or connections that might otherwise be obscured or hidden, 4) temporal and spatial dimensions (thinking about how networks connect between time, space, and place), 5) crowdsourcing and collaboration (involving user contributions to capture data or metadata), and 6)linked, open, and accessible data (research data structured in an interconnected, transparent, and easily retrievable manner, enabling wide access and usability by the DC community).
 

Topics can include: how digital networks have become central to modern healthcare systems, from electronic health records that follow patients to AI-driven diagnostic tools that tap into large language networks and databases. How do these digital networks change the patient-provider relationship, and what are their implications for health equity and access? How do networks facilitate or hinder the flow of resources, knowledge, and care within health systems? How do ethical questions surrounding data ownership, privacy, and surveillance intersect with the study of health in the digital humanities? As health data becomes increasingly networked, how are humanistic concerns about autonomy, identity, and agency addressed? How do formal and informal networks interact in healthcare delivery, from hospital referral systems to community care networks? What role do networks play in public health crises, such as pandemic response or addressing syndemics? How do social and professional networks influence access to care and health outcomes? What about how literary forms, structures, and genres create networks of meaning that illuminate health experiences? Can we map the connections between literary forms, structures, and genres to understand evolving perspectives on health and illness? How have networks of health knowledge and care evolved - how have ideas, treatments, and practices been shared, contested, or suppressed over time, and how do these provide a comparative perspective to contemporary health responses? How do networks connect different scales of health experience – from the molecular networks within our bodies to the local and global networks that shape health policy and research? How do these multi-scale networks interact, and what emerges from their connections?
 

Through this theme, we aim to spark collaborations (and generate networks) between technologists, scientists, public health thinkers, community advocates, and humanists, encouraging innovative approaches to studying and building networks that enhance community health and well-being. We’re particularly interested in exploring how networks can be expanded and strengthened to create positive impact and how the study of network structures can inform our understanding of culture and health, social relations, health justice, and community resilience.

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