Health Beyond Medicine: Professor Paul Crawford's Interdisciplinary Revolution

Paul Crawford is the pioneer and world's first professor of Health Humanities. Our conversation covered his years of work on how creative practices can enhance well-being in and out of the clinic. 

Alongside his academic work, he's also an entertaining fiction writer. His second novel, The Wonders of Doctor Bent is out this week. Without wishing to sound dramatic, I was inspired to learn about his writing practices and was moved by the impact this field has made in the health and wellbeing of patients in recent years. 

The scope for further impact is great and this conversation gave me a thorough re-grounding in the importance of thinking outside the conventional mental silos we put our minds in.

You can find out more about Professor Crawford here: https://www.paulcrawfordauthor.com/ or on X: https://x.com/ProfessorPaulC1.

This podcast was produced by Matt Cooper (https://www.thisismattcooper.com/) with music composed by Loverman (Spotify). 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Health Humanities
• 11:09 The Wallace and Gromit Collaboration
• 23:01 Creating the Health Humanities Discipline
• 43:31 Science, Interpretation and Evidence
• 1:00:20 Florence Nightingale and Cabin Fever
• 1:20:22 Creativity and Mental Health
• 1:38:33 Novel Writing and Literary Purpose
• 1:56:20 The Wonders of Dr Bent