The Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities (CBMH) provides a platform to incorporate ethics and professionalism into the curriculum of UMMC schools and training programs as core values of our learning, service and research communities. Our mission, however, goes further to equip faculty, staff and students with skills to better understand the socio-cultural context in which modern health care takes place. Appreciation of this context deepens our engagement with the human aspects of disease, its treatment and its study, enriching our understanding of how patients experience illness and injury.