Studying medicine forces students in health professions to grapple directly with philosophical questions. These include questions about the nature of being human, the essence of health and healing, the role of suffering, and what it means to live well and die well. They are questions that the world’s religious traditions have offered responses to for thousands of years. Yet the young adults who are studying for different health professions belong primarily to Gen Z, thirty-four percent of whom have no religious affiliation.

In Baltimore, a program gets medical students asking big questions.