This story is part of Humanities in Practice, a Franklin College of Arts and Sciences series exploring the bridge between the sciences and humanities. 

For this physician, knowing the answer is the easy part. 

A patient at Mercy Health Center had a blood pressure reading of 200/120, high enough to put him at risk of a heart attack or stroke. Dr. Cole Phillips knew he needed medication. The patient, who had never taken blood pressure medicine, refused. 

Phillips spent several visits learning what mattered to him. He asked about the life the man wanted and the people he hoped to be with in the years ahead. 

“The blood pressure was the easier problem to treat,” Phillips said. “Getting him to want to live the life he wants—that’s way more complex. Very rarely is the answer as simple as, ‘This is what the data says.’” 

Phillips, a University of Georgia alumnus and the CEO and medical director of Mercy Health Center in Athens, applies training in biochemistry, molecular biology, and history to treat patients without insurance. His experience shows how the humanities can prepare physicians and other professionals for work grounded in human relationships. 

UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences is expanding such opportunities through a $300,000 grant from the Teagle Foundation’s Cornerstone: Learning for Living initiative. Faculty are developing multidisciplinary courses that introduce students to enduring texts and connect humanistic study with the questions they will face in their professions. 

The effort grew from a premise offered by Mario Erasmo, head of Franklin College’s Department of Classics: Not every technical problem has a technical solution. 

Phillips agrees. 

“Often, the problem is not just a technical problem,” he said. 

A high blood sugar reading, for example, may reflect a patient’s limited food options due to cost and local availability. Medical school trains physicians to identify readings and advise realistic dietary and activity changes. Phillips said the physician must also understand whether those recommendations can work in the patient’s life. 

“Knowing the answer is not the hard part,” he said. “It’s building trust—trust in the treatment and trust in the process. Most of medicine is relating to the person in front of you.” 

Mercy provides medical, dental, and behavioral health services to uninsured patients in the Athens area. After earning dual bachelor’s degrees at UGA in 2012, Phillips went on to complete medical and business degrees before returning to Athens to direct the health center. UGA named him a 2025 Blue Key Young Alumnus. 

Phillips added history as a second major because he enjoyed it and wanted to stay at UGA rather than graduate early. He has since found it central to his work. 

“I remember way more about history than the material I studied in the other disciplines,” he said. “I use it more in understanding the human experience. It’s hard to overstate how important that is.” 

His history courses taught him to consider how people are shaped by their circumstances and experiences. He brings that perspective into the exam room. 

“People are messy and complicated and fickle,” Phillips said. Medical knowledge matters, he added, but physicians must be able to relate to their patients and understand their experiences. 

Erasmo, the department head, sees that understanding as essential to a physician’s preparation. Physicians care for patients experiencing fear and pain, often across cultural differences and in circumstances without clear answers. Literature, history, and philosophy help students learn to interpret those experiences, consider perspectives beyond their own, and respond with empathy before they enter the examination room. 

“The connection between medicine and the humanities reaches back to the origins of both fields,” Erasmo said. “One text selected for UGA’s new humanities courses is Hippocrates’ On Airs, Waters, and Places, which considers how environment and place affect human health. Amy Medlock, biochemistry professor at Franklin and at UGA’s School of Medicine, has introduced the ancient text to medical students.” 

Erasmo also points to Greek tragedy, whose characters must act amid loss, conflict, and circumstances beyond their control. Reading such works gives students practice considering decisions for which technical knowledge cannot provide a complete answer. 

Phillips worries that premedical education places too much emphasis on grades, test scores, résumés, and required shadowing hours. Students spend years focused on their own performance before entering a profession devoted to others. 

“The entire endeavor is about you—your GPA, your ability to succeed on a test, your ability to master residency,” Phillips said. “Then you get out, and they say, ‘Now you need to care about other people.’” 

He wants aspiring physicians to pursue experiences that require initiative and service. His nonprofit work before medical school taught him to direct his attention toward the needs of others. 

“The goal is to get you outside of yourself,” he said. 

Phillips expects that ability to become more valuable as artificial intelligence takes on more of medicine’s analytical work. He uses AI regularly and believes it will improve efficiency, but patients will continue to need physicians who can earn their confidence. 

“AI is not a person,” he said. “The doctors who are good at relating to another person will thrive in this environment.” 

Software can recognize the danger of a blood pressure reading of 200/120 and recommend medication. A physician must understand why the patient is afraid to take it. 

The new Franklin College of Arts and Sciences 1801 Lecture Series begins Tuesday, Sept. 8, with science communicator and “Ologies” host Alie Ward. The free public event, focused on science, storytelling, and the joy of curiosity, will take place from 3–4 p.m. in Room 271 of the Richard B. Russell Special Collections Libraries. The series and the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences forthcoming Applied Humanities Certificate are supported by the Teagle Foundation Cornerstone Learning for Living initiative.