Maine's Innovative Medical Humanities Project Wins National Award — November 17, 2003 Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health Care®, a program of the Maine Humanities Council has received a national award from the Federation of State Humanities Councils. The 2003 Helen & Martin Schwartz Prize for Excellence in Public Programming was awarded to Literature & Medicine because, according to the judges, "it is a project extraordinarily strong in its humanities content and brilliantly simple in its premise: that the humanities can bridge enormous distances among people who, while working in the same physical space, may be separated by significant professional, economic and educational barriers. [We] were impressed with its outreach to an interestingly underserved audience, with its scope and replicable nature, and with its ultimate focus on the individual human being in need." Literature & Medicine, a hospital-based, scholar-led, humanities reading and discussion program for mixed groups of veteran health care professionals, was created in 1997 by the Maine Humanities Council. Twenty-five hospitals in Maine have taken part and the project has now been expanded, under Maine's guidance, to all of the New England states as well as to Illinois, Utah, and North Carolina. Victoria Bonebakker, Associate Director of the Maine Humanities Council and Project Director of Literature & Medicine, says "Caregivers often don't know their patients, who may be of a different religion, economic status or cultural background, so health care professionals cannot rely on what they know from their own lives. Literature, however, offers vicarious experiences of worlds outside that of the reader. This is why the field of medical humanities is growing nationally. Literature & Medicine is part of a larger effort, but it is also unique, as it links hospitals on a statewide and now national basis, and involves a heterogeneous mix of veteran health care providers." The program has also proved to be a cost-effective way to improve patient care. According to one hospital administrator, "The reflection and conversation that takes place greatly enhances the level of cooperation, collaboration, and esprit de corps within our hospital family and our community at large. This impetus in turn greatly improves the quality of care we provide to our patients and their families." Dorothy Schwartz, Executive Director of the Maine Humanities Council says, "Literature & Medicine places the humanities at the center of workaday lives, where they belong. The Council's experience with programs for different occupational groups convinces us of the value of bringing such groups together around literature. The humanities can help us understand ourselves and others more completely and need to be integrated into our work lives, not pushed to the margins as an evening's entertainment or as enrichment for our retirement years, and the bonds shared by people from the same area of work, who are dealing with similar issues, help to create a safe space for discussion." Victoria Bonebakker and Marli Weiner, the Council's Board Chair, accepted the award in Savannah, Georgia at the annual conference of the National Federation of State Humanities Councils in mid-November. The Council also received the Helen & Martin Schwartz Prize in 1998 for "The Odyssey Project", where the Odyssey was the focus of a Council Humanities Weekend, a weeklong summer teacher institute, and a summer reading and theater program for boys at the Maine Youth Center. The Maine Humanities Council was founded in 1976 and is a private, nonprofit organization and an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Council is the home of the Harriet P. Henry Center for the Book. For more information on Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health Care® call toll-free 1-866-MEreader.