The arts and global health inequities

In a world beset by health challenges of enormous proportions, and increasing disparities in the well-being and health of the poor and the affluent within and between countries, it behoves the editors of the journal to consider the contributions the arts can make given such global realities. In particular, we need to address the challenge that the concerns of this journal are either an elitist luxury available only to the already advantaged, or an irrelevant distraction, offering little or nothing to the task of tackling major sources of ill health, suffering and premature death in the world. Such views are brought into striking relief by the total absence of any reference to the arts in the recent report from the Commission on the Social Determinants of Health, Closing the gap in a generation (CSDH, 2008). The report is a clarion call to recognise the growing levels of inequity in global health, and to acknowledge the key political, social and economic factors exacerbating health inequalities between and within countries throughout the world. Whatever powers the arts may have in relation to improving a sense of well-being and quality of life, it perhaps strains credulity to think that any form of creative arts practice or experience could help to address the serious and pressing challenges the Commission attempted to grapple with. To quote just a few of the statistics scattered throughout the report: