WHO/Europe, supported by the European Union (EU), is scaling up its support to Eastern Partnership countries to integrate arts and culture into health systems, through a series of regional capacity-building workshops as catalysts for country-led action and collaboration.
Across the Region, health systems face complex pressures, from demographic shifts and workforce shortages to the less visible burdens of trauma, social isolation and long-term stress.
Recognizing the potential of arts and culture as tools to enhance recovery, resilience and dignity in care, particularly for mental health and well-being, WHO/Europe is helping countries shift from fragmented initiatives towards structured, evidence-based approaches anchored in national priorities.
This work comes as part of the Building Arts Capacity for Health (BACH) pillar of the wider EU-funded “Health Resilience in the Eastern Partnership” programme – a 3-year initiative financed by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Enlargement and Eastern Neighbourhood. This programme is supporting Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine to strengthen health workforce capacities and enhance mental health systems through collaboration with the cultural sector.
Late in 2025, WHO/Europe ran workshops for the 5 countries, to step up efforts in this area of work, aiming to support them to map existing arts-in-health initiatives, institutions and key individuals, deepen connections between health and culture, and build capacity to design and implement arts-in-health initiatives.
But what does integrating arts and culture into health care actually entail? It can be organizing a museum visit to address loneliness and support social cohesion. It can also be dance classes for people living with Parkinson’s disease, listening to music for dementia, or joining a choir to improve lung health.
Arts in health is a growing interdisciplinary field and can be seen as part of a wider approach to public health, going beyond the biomedical and clinical, while also being evidence-based.
“Integrating arts-based approaches into health expands the range of tools available to address key public health priorities. In Armenia, arts and health have strong potential to offer people-centred ways to support healthy ageing, mental well-being and social inclusion, while complementing ongoing efforts to strengthen primary health care and system resilience,” explains Dr Inessa Asmangulyan from the Ministry of Health of Armenia.
“The BACH workshop showed the value of arts and culture in advancing these goals, and we hope to see such approaches increasingly institutionalized and reflected in future public health interventions.”
Focus on practical learning
The workshops were led by key arts and health practitioners from the Jameel Arts & Health Lab and the Cluj Culture Centre in Romania.
They focused on practical learning, with participants working with tools for co-design and evaluation, examining case studies of arts-based interventions in health centres and rehabilitation services, and discussing how to strengthen governance, ethics and monitoring frameworks so that creative health collaborations can be scaled sustainably.
In Yerevan, Armenia, culture and health stakeholders from both Armenia and Georgia came together to explore how creativity can enhance mental health and psychosocial support, strengthen community engagement and reduce stigma in care.
In Chișinău, Republic of Moldova, participants from the country and from Ukraine – including health professionals, artists, researchers, policy-makers and civil society representatives – examined how arts can support mental well-being, health workforce resilience and service innovation.
Highlighting the importance of collaboration across sectors
The workshops also reinforced the importance of bringing different sectors together to promote health. Participants from ministries of health and culture, local authorities, universities and civil society highlighted how planning and coordinated funding can include arts and culture in national health agendas, improve access to quality services and address the emotional and social dimensions of health.
“The role of art is becoming more complex as mental health challenges spread across Ukrainian society,” said Veronika Skliarova, Founder of Art Dot, a nongovernmental organization based in Ukraine.
“We urge the increased collaboration between civil society organizations and government, artists and psychologists to make these collaborations stronger and more sustainable.”
Looking ahead, WHO/Europe will build on workshop outcomes by: supporting countries to pilot arts-in-health initiatives; developing monitoring and evaluation frameworks; and sustaining regional learning through communities of practice. Follow-up work will translate ideas from the workshops into implementable projects and align arts-in-health work with national mental health strategies and broader system reforms.
Promoting health resilience in the Eastern Partnership
By including arts and culture into the “Health Resilience in the Eastern Partnership” programme, WHO and the EU are hoping to harness the potential of arts and culture as part of more resilient, people-centred health systems, bringing creative solutions to complex challenges and advancing shared goals under the EU-WHO partnership.