Welcome to the Visual Arts in Healthcare Program at Brigham & Women’s Hospital (VAH@BWH). This innovative program focuses on visual arts education and research for healthcare workers and is the first of its kind within Brigham & Women’s Hospital.
Based in the Department of Medicine at BWH, the program trains healthcare workers using visual arts methods that build essential skills of a humanistic provider, including empathy, teamwork, respect, curiosity, and cultural responsiveness.
We work with healthcare teams in all stages of their career and across departments. The visual arts in healthcare expands clinical skills, build teams, and mitigates healthcare burnout.
Brooke DiGiovanni Evans and Dr. Joel T. Katz, co-founders
MFA, Boston
About Our Organization
VAH @ BWH was created in 2022 bringing together pioneering Brigham & Women’s Art & Medicine programs that started over 22 years ago with a single course at Harvard Medical School, Training the Eye: Improving the Art of Physical Diagnosis. Since then programs have expanded to serve medical students, trainees, and healthcare providers in all specialties. Learn about our mission, vision, and goals for this new initiative.
Harvard Art Museums
Art & Medicine Programs
Integrating the arts into healthcare training and professional development has been shown to improve clinical skills like observation and communication. It can also strengthen teamwork and build empathy and cultural awareness. Explore some of the ongoing programs and hear about clinicians’ experiences.
MFA, Boston
Resources and Research
One of the core founding goals for the VAH@BWH is to expand research and scholarship in the field of visual arts and medicine. This is an area that institutions nationally and internationally are contributing too. Discover a variety of resources in this page and check back frequently for the research we are doing at Brigham & Women’s and Harvard Medical School to add to this field.
MOMA, NYC
The Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History, University of Texas at Dallas, Partnership
Explore resources from art museum and medical school partnerships gathered since the 2016 Art of Examination Forum in NYC. This includes an annotated bibliography, list of program descriptions, sample course syllabi, video and audio recordings, and resources from the Forum.