Health Humanities

This is the first manifesto for Health Humanities worldwide. It sets out the context for this emergent and innovative field which extends beyond Medical Humanities to advance the inclusion and impact of the arts and humanities in healthcare, health and well-being.

Health Humanities draws upon the multiple and expanding fields of enquiry that link health and social care disciplines with the arts and humanities. It aims to encourage innovation and novel cross-disciplinary explorations of how the arts and humanities can inform and transform healthcare, health and well-being. It calls for a much richer body of work that breaks out of limited applications of the arts and humanities to any specific healthcare discipline, as in the medical humanities, which to date has been largely preoccupied with training medical practitioners. The health humanities is all about advancing health and well-being through the arts and humanities in ways that are not solely the preserve of medicine or to be defined and driven by it. As a more inclusive and applied field of activity with a fast-growing international community of researchers, health humanities looks to generate diverse and even radical approaches for creating healthier and more compassionate societies. This book aims to assist readers to consider how the arts and humanities can be applied more ambitiously in generating a healthier world.