Dr. Fietje is based at the Behavioural and Cultural Insights unit at the WHO Regional Office for Europe. With a background in English literature and the cultural history of medicine, he now works at the intersection of culture, public health and policy, asking how cultural contexts affect the ways people understand illness, care, pain, treatment and well-being.

Together, Michael, Ronit and Nils explore how someone with a PhD in English literature came to work at the WHO; what culture has to do with public health; and why the humanities matter for medicine today. They discuss the growing field of arts and health, including the evidence that artistic and cultural participation can support mental health, social connection and physical well-being.

The conversation also looks at social prescribing, the idea that a GP might one day prescribe a museum visit, a choir, a nature walk or another form of cultural engagement alongside more conventional forms of care. More broadly, the episode asks how culture can help us rethink what counts as evidence, what kinds of knowledge matter in medicine, and how health systems might better respond to the complexity of human experience.

Subscribe to Medicine and the Healing Arts wherever you get your podcasts for thoughtful conversations with scholars and practitioners on Asian medicine, religion, history, healing and the questions they raise for health today.

Links and resources:

Dr. Nils Fietje profile from the Culture for Health project:
https://www.cultureforhealth.eu/inspiration/how-the-arts-entered-the-who/

The evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being — scoping review:
https://bci-hub.org/documents/what-evidence-role-arts-improving-health-and-well-being-scoping-review

The Lancet article on arts, health and well-being:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)60226-4/fulltext

The BCI Hub, an online resource centre and knowledge repository for emerging research on behavioural and cultural factors that affect health behaviour, in collaboration with the WHO Collaborating Centre at the University of Exeter:
https://bci-hub.org/

NHS Social prescribing (England):
https://www.england.nhs.uk/personalisedcare/social-prescribing/

UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport 2024 report on culture, health and wellbeing:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/culture-and-heritage-capital-research-and-outputs

Daniel Moerman, Meaning, Medicine and the ‘Placebo Effect’:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/meaning-medicine-and-the-placebo-effect/C189929ABE972E5D4C7FE32008EE8838

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In this opening episode, hosts Profs. Michael Stanley-Baker and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim introduce the podcast and reflect on the paths that brought them to the history of medicine and the healing arts. They share how their thinking and scholarly practice have developed over time, the questions that continue to animate their work, and some of the encounters, insights and formative moments that have shaped the way they understand medicine, healing, history and care.

Across the series, Michael and Ronit will be joined by scholars, practitioners and thinkers to explore historically rooted medical knowledge as a resource for rethinking health, illness, care and well-being in the present. Together, they consider how different cultures and traditions have understood the body, healing, suffering, environment and the meaning of health.

This first episode sets out the central questions of the podcast: what can ancient Asian medicine, global healing traditions and the long history of medical knowledge teach us about the challenges facing medicine today?

Subscribe to Medicine and the Healing Arts wherever you get your podcasts for thoughtful conversations with scholars and practitioners on Asian medicine, religion, history, healing and the questions they raise for health today.

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Links and resources:

• MIT Global Humanities Initiative- Medicine and the Healing Arts pillar: https://comparativeglobalhumanities.mit.edu/pillars/healing-arts-and-human-well-being/

• Life of Breath project: https://lifeofbreath.webspace.durham.ac.uk/

• Asian Medicine and COVID 19 Special Issue: https://brill.com/view/journals/asme/16/1/asme.16.issue-1.xml

• IASTAM: https://iastam.org/

• IASTAM COVID webinars: https://iastam.org/category/webinars/

• NTU and Max-Planck Center for Bio-Cultural Worlding: https://ntu.ccasingapore.org/researchs/max-planck-ntu-singapore-centre-for-biocultural-worlding/