Alzheimer's Poetry Project

Creativity in Elder Care
Training Medical Students
in the Use of Creative Expression to Improve Elder Care

“The poem springs from the half-spoken words of such patients as the physician sees from day to day… This, in the end, comes perhaps to be the occupation of the physician after a lifetime of careful listening.”

                                                                           -William Carlos Williams

We are excited to announce that in July 2016, we launched the The Art and Medicine Program at the University Of Arizona College Of Medicine – Phoenix and the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project (APP), based in Brooklyn, New York, provided a series of participatory arts training workshops for medical students to use creativity with elder patients. We developed a medical student curriculum entitled, “Creativity in Elder Care,” for the Art in Medicine program. The program is now in its third year.

The workshops were co-taught by Gary Glazner, founder and Executive Director of the APP, and Cynthia A. Standley, PhD, professor in the Department of Bioethics and Medical Humanism at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix.