Imagine your doctor recommends a visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Or to get an Rx for a ballroom dance class or a weekly walk to the Arnold Arboretum.
That could happen under a new program announced Thursday by the Mass Cultural Council and Art Pharmacy, an Atlanta-based company that partners with health providers and managed care plans to prescribe doses of art and culture to help in correcting a variety of mental health issues.
“We know this work is effective preventative medicine, and we are pleased that it will also create a new revenue stream for cultural organizations, which, for the first time, will be compensated specifically for the health benefits they provide ,” Michael J. Bobbitt. The executive director of the Mass Cultural Council said in a statement.
Social prescribing, which has been adopted in Britain and more than a dozen other countries around the world, is the practice of referring patients to community-based arts and culture organizations to address mental health issues and their underlying causes. including stress, isolation and loneliness. Supporters cite research showing that non-clinical activities — a visit to a botanical garden, a pottery class, gardening — can improve a person’s mental health and can also lead to reductions in doctor visits and hospitalizations.
With the launch of the new program in Massachusetts, the arts officially become a popular health care solution in the Bay State, said Art Pharmacy CEO Chris Appleton.
“The idea of art as medicine is not new,” Appleton said. “But there is a movement developing in the United States to bring social prescribing into the US health care system.”
Indeed, it’s also a growing trend at American colleges and universities, according to The New York Times, which reported in April that Stanford University and Rutgers University-Newark have begun prescribing arts and cultural activities for students as part of their schools. ™ mental health services.
In addition to working with health plans and hospitals in Massachusetts, including Mass General Brigham, Art Pharmacy and the Mass Cultural Council are continuing to build a network of arts and culture groups interested in participating in the program. To date, Art Pharmacy has engagements from over 300 organizations, including Groton Hill Music Center, Councils on Aging, Berkshire Children’s Choir and Berkshire Community Choir, Dance Complex, Danforth Museum of Art, Korean Cultural Society of Boston, Latinx Community Center for Empowerment, Castle of Our Skins, a Jamaica Plain group celebrating black art in classical music, Jacob’s Pillow and Merrimack Repertory Theater in Lowell.
As an example, Appleton said that a patient diagnosed with a health concern such as anxiety would be given a prescription for, say, 12 doses of arts and culture, which would be called into the Art Pharmacy (as opposed to a pharmacy traditional stores like CVS or Walgreens.) A “care navigator” would create a patient profile based on the person’s clinical and social needs, as well as their preferences and experiences in the arts, and then make a series of activity recommendations, which the patient would choose. from.
“We know that the arts have healing powers — for both physical and mental health,” Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement. “Massachusetts is proud to once again pioneer a transformative medical innovation with the nation’s first statewide state-of-the-art prescription solution.â€
Mark Shanahan can be reached at mark.shanahan@globe.com. Follow him @MarkASHanahan.
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