A survey of arts and health programmes in Israel

This article summarizes the current state of the field of applied arts and health in Israel. It begins by reviewing the literature assessing the state of applied arts and health in other countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia). After establishing a research methodology, it provides a short history of the development of applied arts and health in Israel. The main section of the article assesses practice in Israel in the five content areas of applied arts and health: patient care, community well-being, caring for care-givers, education and healing environments. Patient care dominates the field of applied arts and health in Israel. The author hypothesizes that this is due to the extraordinarily robust role that the creative-arts therapies play in Israel’s healthcare system. The article concludes with some suggestions for how research in the field may be advanced in the future.