Health, Culture and the Arts: A Conversation with Dr. Nils Fietje of the WHO

Traditional Medicine on the World Stage: Reflections from the WHO Global Summit in Delhi

In this episode of Medicine and the Healing Arts, hosts Profs. Michael Stanley-Baker and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim reflect on their visit to Delhi, India, where they took part in the Second WHO Global Summit on Traditional Medicine. The summit brought together practitioners, scholars, policy makers, ministers of health, healers and delegates from around the world to consider the place of traditional medicine in contemporary health systems. For Michael and Ronit, it was an opportunity to see many of the questions at the heart of this podcast playing out on a global stage: can mainstream biomedicine and traditional medical systems work together? What happens when different ways of knowing and treating the body meet? And can history help us think more clearly about the future of medicine? Together, they discuss the atmosphere of the summit, the diversity of people and practices represented there, and the challenge of thinking across different medical traditions without reducing them to a single model of evidence or efficacy. They reflect on examples from India, China, Iraq, Brazil, Canada, Mongolia and beyond, asking what it might mean to become not only medically bilingual, but medically polyglot. The conversation also explores the role of history in understanding medicine today. Michael and Ronit consider how the movement of medical knowledge across regions, traditions and time periods can help us rethink the relationship between traditional medicine, biomedicine, policy, intellectual property, data, and lived experience. At the heart of the episode is a question that runs throughout the series: how can different cultures, histories and knowledge systems help us imagine more open, ethical and plural ways of thinking about health, healing and human flourishing? 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: Second WHO Global Summit on Traditional Medicine - full summit recordings:https://tm-summit.org/2025/ [https://tm-summit.org/2025/] WHO Traditional Medicine Global Library - a global resource including multimedia documentation, peer-reviewed articles, policy papers and more: https://tmgl.org [https://tmgl.org/] First WHO Global Summit on Traditional Medicine: https://tm-summit.org/2023/ [https://tm-summit.org/2023/] WHO Global Traditional Medicine Centre, Gujarat: https://www.who.int/teams/who-global-traditional-medicine-centre/overview [https://www.who.int/teams/who-global-traditional-medicine-centre/overview] International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine(IASTAM): https://iastam.org/ [https://iastam.org/] WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy 2025–2034: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240113176 [https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240113176] Medicine and the Healing Arts pillar, MIT Comparative Global Humanities: https://comparativeglobalhumanities.mit.edu/pillars/healing-arts-and-human-well-being/ [https://comparativeglobalhumanities.mit.edu/pillars/healing-arts-and-human-well-being/] MIT Comparative Global Humanities: https://comparativeglobalhumanities.mit.edu/ [https://comparativeglobalhumanities.mit.edu/] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.asianmedicinezone.com [https://www.asianmedicinezone.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Health, Culture and the Arts: A Conversation with Dr. Nils Fietje of the WHO

In this episode of Medicine and the Healing Arts, hosts Profs. Michael Stanley-Baker and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim speak with Dr. Nils Fietje about the role of culture, arts and the humanities in shaping health and well-being. 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/ [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 [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 [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/ [https://bci-hub.org/] NHS Social prescribing (England):https://www.england.nhs.uk/personalisedcare/social-prescribing/ [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 [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 [https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/meaning-medicine-and-the-placebo-effect/C189929ABE972E5D4C7FE32008EE8838] Subscribe to be notified when future episodes are released:https://www.asianmedicinezone.com/s/medicine-and-the-healing-arts [https://www.asianmedicinezone.com/s/medicine-and-the-healing-arts] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.asianmedicinezone.com [https://www.asianmedicinezone.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Introducing the Medicine and the Healing Arts Podcast: Ancient Medicine, Modern Questions

Welcome to the very first episode of Medicine and the Healing Arts, presented by the MIT Global Humanities Initiative. 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. Links and resources: * MIT Global Humanities Initiative- Medicine and the Healing Arts pillar: https://comparativeglobalhumanities.mit.edu/pillars/healing-arts-and-human-well-being/ [https://comparativeglobalhumanities.mit.edu/pillars/healing-arts-and-human-well-being/] * Life of Breath project: https://lifeofbreath.webspace.durham.ac.uk/ [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 [https://brill.com/view/journals/asme/16/1/asme.16.issue-1.xml] * IASTAM: https://iastam.org/ [https://iastam.org/] * IASTAM COVID webinars: https://iastam.org/category/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/ [https://ntu.ccasingapore.org/researchs/max-planck-ntu-singapore-centre-for-biocultural-worlding/] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.asianmedicinezone.com [https://www.asianmedicinezone.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]