Where Health Meets History: Brazil

This post begins a short blog series from our study abroad course, Race, History, and Health in Brazil. Over the next two weeks, we’ll be sharing reflections from Salvador—moments that help us think more carefully about how race, history, culture, and health show up in daily life. These reflections aren’t meant to be tidy or complete. They’re about learning in real time, often alongside a group of students who are doing this for the first time, in a place that asks a lot of our attention.

Day one did exactly that.

We began the morning with an orientation led by Clara Ramos, Director of ICR Brasil, whose greatest skill may be her ability to make people feel both prepared and at ease at the same time. Rather than a long list of rules or warnings, Clara focused on cultural norms, expectations, and how to move through this experience with curiosity and care. She did this with humor that made students laugh and, more importantly, relax. It’s remarkable how much easier learning becomes once people feel safe enough to admit they’re unsure.

From there, students were introduced to their host families, who they’ll be living with for the remainder of the program. This is where the real immersion begins—beyond lectures and excursions, into daily life, shared meals, and conversations that happen in a mix of Portuguese, English, Google Translate, gestures, and goodwill. Watching students navigate those first introductions—excited, nervous, and very brave—was a quiet highlight of the day.

We spent the rest of the day alongside students from the University of Kansas and their program director, Dr. Luciano Tosta, a Salvador native, who were with us from orientation through dinner. By mid-afternoon, it already felt less like two groups and more like one shared classroom moving through the city together.

Forte de Santo Antônio da Barra

Our panoramic tour of Salvador with Frederico Bomsucesso, an educator and tour guide with ICR Brasil, offered students their first sustained encounter with the city’s history. From Forte de Santo Antônio da Barra, built during Portuguese colonization, to neighborhoods where colonial architecture and early favelas exist side by side, Salvador doesn’t allow for simple stories. History here is visible and lived, and students were beginning to see how the past continues to shape who has access, security, and care.

Casa de iemanjá

At the Casa de Iemanjá, we learned about Candomblé and the dual religious practices common in Salvador. Many Salvadorians practice Catholicism alongside Afro-Brazilian spiritual traditions—not as contradiction, but as continuity. For students, this was an early lesson in resisting neat categories and recognizing how belief, identity, and wellbeing are deeply connected.

Painter at work in his studio in Ateliê Casa de Prentice

We also visited Ateliê Casa de Prentice, where the last remaining artisan in Bahia who hand-paints tiles used to restore historic churches continues work that is careful, patient, and largely unseen. It was a moment that asked students to slow down and notice labor that often goes unacknowledged.

Then came an essential pedagogical intervention: ice cream at Sorveteria da Ribeira. Salvador takes tropical fruit very seriously, and the maracujá (passion fruit) sorbet lived up to its reputation. This stop contributed nothing to our formal learning objectives and everything to morale.

Basílica do Senhor do Bonfim

Our final stop was the Basílica do Senhor do Bonfim, often referred to as a “poor” church, not because it lacks beauty, but because it was built by and for enslaved and working-class people. It is modest and stunning all at once, offering a powerful counterpoint to the grand European cathedrals many of us are more familiar with, and inviting reflection on whose faith and labor shape sacred spaces.

We ended the day with dinner at Boi Preto, a Brazilian steakhouse, where the food arrives continuously and reflection happens somewhere between bites. By then, students were tired—but also more open, more connected, and more attentive to one another than they had been that morning. Most of us left in a state best described as a collective food coma.

What stayed with me most today was watching students come out of their shells—bonding across ages, institutions, cultures, and backgrounds, and fully engaging with the day. Being in a place where you don’t speak the language and must rely on others is deeply humbling. It sharpens awareness, softens assumptions, and builds appreciation in ways no lecture ever could.

Day one offered history, humor, beauty, and more maracujá than necessary. More importantly, it offered our first glimpse of Salvador as a living classroom—one that asks us to pay attention, stay curious, and learn with care. Salvador has already started teaching us. Our job now is to keep showing up—and maybe pace ourselves at dinner!

Chelsey Patten, DBe, HEC-C

Director of Clinical Ethics and Assistant Professor of Medicine