Crossing Borders and Joining Forces

Abstract

It is my privilege to join Joanne Loewy as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Music and Medicine. To familiarize the readership of what I bring to the journal, I am pleased to provide some insight based on history and perspective of the growth of music and medicine and my involvement in these domains for the past 25 years. As I see it, this new journal offers a peer-reviewed platform for inter- disciplinary dialogue. Music and Medicine is the official organ of the International Association for Music and Medicine (IAMM). In my capacity as president of the International Society for Music in Medicine (ISMM), I welcome the opportunity for us to dialogue, thus strengthening our common goal. I see our goal as one of fostering and confirming the use of music and musical stimuli as a preventive, diagnostic, therapeutic, and rehabilitative means in clinical medicine and health care in gen- eral on a broad scale. Music therapy and MusicMedicine as defined below are still not part of routine therapeutic regimes in traditional medicine to the extent that scientific evidence and clinical experience can be expected to suggest...