Welcome to Houston, where we indulge in a delicious fusion of health and the arts. Here, despite endless concrete and heavy heat, the fields of medicine and the arts flourish—and cross to yield intriguing hybrids. This book parades our passion for wedding these two worlds in and across medical education, community-based nonprofits, hospitals, and other spaces. Bearing the subtitle, “A Field Guide to Local Collaborations between Healthcare, Academia, and Community Organizations,” this book’s emphasis is on the between. For that reason, its chapters are not easily clustered under subheadings like “Arts and Health in Healthcare” or “Arts and Health in Academia.” Instead, almost every chapter showcases the strong links an institution from one sphere forges with “outsiders,” leading to something new that interweaves us and them.

While varied, the partnerships this book presents all share a common aim: to nurture more caring and effective healthcare professionals and to improve the wellbeing of patients and communities. My hope is that these collaborations will inspire you to bolster or create similar alliances, wherever you are.

Because the chapters do not interact with each other, feel free to dive in anywhere. Swim around long enough, and you will discover:

• a powerhouse arts program in a top-ranked children’s hospital
• a public-facing medical storytelling event, followed by three exemplary stories
• the insightful contributions the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston makes to medical education
• a student-driven research lab that explored how grassroots clinics support their patients’ migration and religious journeys
• a dance performance designed to address one group’s mental health challenges
• arts ventures in collaboration with immigrants and refugees, to support social integration
• a training track in Arts Leadership, preparing graduates to thrive in arts-and-health settings
• a drawing-oriented pairing of older adults in assisted living with medical students
• a full play that explores moral dimensions of caring for a hospitalized patient who is blind and has advanced Alzheimer’s disease—complete with materials to aid in staging the play and assigning it to students
• a one-of-a-kind collaboration between a university’s medical school and its creative writing program, now also supported by Inprint, a Houston-based literary nonprofit

Having lived in Houston since 2014, I have had the honor of learning first-hand about many of these programs. Some were presented at Healing Arts Houston, a conference hosted by my institution, the University of Houston, in 2022, and for which I was appointed program chair by my former Dean, Stephen J. Spann. My thanks to Dr. Spann and to Andrew Davis, Dean of our College of the Arts, for their vision in bringing the conference to Houston. Apart from projects shared there, this book features others I encountered while teaching undergraduate courses at the arts-and-health intersection. In Houston, such initiatives continue to bloom. One impressive new example is The Health Museum’s Healing Arts Program.

Although this book is a broad and useful introduction to our city’s vibrant arts-and-health scene, its offerings are not without flaws or limitations. For example, several programs are relatively new and have evidence bases that still need strengthening. Others would benefit from more diverse participation, more equitable and accessible programming, and a sharper focus on social change (Albright et al, 2021). Only recently have some begun to explore how to reapproach their work in partnership with, and to benefit, poor and other historically marginalized populations.

An open access publication, this book itself is the result of a dynamic collaboration. The University of Houston Libraries led the way. My thanks to Taylor Davis-Van Atta, Head of Research Services and former Director of the Digital Research Commons, and to Ariana Santiago, Head of Open Education Services. Taylor and Ariana connected me with students—and, crucially, paid them—to serve as production assistants and a contributing artist.

Finally, I am grateful to the talented array of physicians, artists, educators, and others who contributed to this volume. Thank you all for teaching me so much.

References

Albright, Ariadne, Ferol Carytsas, Ophelia Chambliss, Ping Ho, Sarah Hoover, and Kerry Royer. Arts in health professionals. In Core curriculum for arts in health professionals, eds. Ariadne Albright and Ferol P. Carytsas, 38-69. San Diego: National Organization for Arts in Health.