The intersections between arts, creativity and health are of significant importance in the humanities and social sciences. Arts and health research, for example, suggests that the arts offer participatory and transformational alternatives to traditional health communication. However, concepts and methods are predominantly informed by Global North research, and critical insights from arts traditions elsewhere remain to be fully integrated into common models. Ghana offers a unique case study for examining local and global dynamics in arts-based health communication, because of the country's rich art traditions as well as its place in global history and in the global imagination. Healing art forms like music and sculpture have evolved through intentional cross-cultural borrowings, as well as through changes imposed through slavery, colonialism and post-colonial political systems. Selling Healing tells a polyvocal story of how Ghanaian art forms intersect with health, illness and healing, inviting a re-imagining of health communication in global health.

‘Too often, global narratives about Africa are flattened into tales of crisis: war, famine, disease. Selling Healing challenges this, offering instead a textured portrait of Ghanaians’ knowledge systems, creativity, and health practices. The result is a book that reclaims the continent’s voice and presents Ghana and Africa with nuance, beauty and complexity.’

Hibbah Osei-Kwasi - Senior Lecturer Nutrition and Public Health, Loughborough University, UK

‘A powerful and timely reminder of how deeply Ghana's HIV response has always been shaped by culture, storytelling, and living experience - and why these elements remain essential today.’

Lord Dartey - Head of Ethics Office, UNAIDS

‘[This book] offers a timely and compelling examination of how Ghana’s creative arts and indigenous healing traditions can fundamentally reshape health communication, particularly in responding to complex challenges such as HIV and AIDS.’

Richard N. Amenyah - Country Director, UNAIDS

‘Selling Healing reminds us that healing is not confined to clinics and hospitals. It happens in music, in ritual, in storytelling, in protest, and in everyday social life. And sometimes, healing is contested. This book gives us a language to engage with that complexity. And perhaps more importantly it challenges us, gently but firmly, to do public health communication differently.’

Francis Agyei - University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ghana

‘In Selling Healing, women emerge as central figures in producing art and sustaining arts traditions and health communication. When Fante women perform adzewa or Sirigu women paint murals, they are not only preserving culture, they are also communicating important messages about community life and women’s health.’

Vida Asah-Ayeh - University of Ghana, Legon

‘In a rapidly changing world where the stakes of misinformation are higher than ever, this book reminds us that health systems do not only need more resources - they also need a deeper understanding of people, culture, and the lived realities of communities.’

Jacob Novignon - University of Ghana, Legon

‘Selling Healing belongs to Ama de-Graft Aikins’s disciplinary domain of social psychology. But more than that it is part public health, part marketing, part arts, part history, part PR, part communications at the micro level and at a macro level. This is, in my view, a book that deserves to be described as a classic.’

Yaw Nsarkoh - Strategic Advisor/Director, London, UK

‘The interdisciplinary approach - drawing on art, history, anthropology, social psychology, and medical and health sciences - is a key strength of Selling Healing, as it moves beyond a biomedical lens and encourages readers to see healing as a cultural practice, where language, ritual, and art intersect. This will deeply resonate with many readers, especially those of African descent.’

Olutobi Sanuade - University of Houston, USA