Imagine being prescribed a visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum by your doctor. Or getting an Rx for a ballroom dancing class or a weekly walk in the Arnold Arboretum.
It 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 arts and culture to help remedy a range of mental-health issues.
“We know this work to be effective preventive medicine and are thrilled it will also create a new revenue stream for cultural organizations who, for the first time, will be compensated specifically for the health benefits they provide,” Michael J. Bobbitt, 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, social isolation, and loneliness. Supporters cite research indicating that nonclinical activities — a visit to a botanic garden, a ceramics class, gardening — can improve a person’s mental health and may also lead to reductions in doctor visits and hospitalizations.
With the launch of the new program in Massachusetts, the arts officially become a recognized health care solution in the Bay State, said Art Pharmacy CEO Chris Appleton.
“The idea of the arts as medicine is not novel,” said Appleton. “But there’s an emerging movement in the United States to bring social prescribing to the US health care system.”
Indeed, it’s also a growing trend in US 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 to students as part of the 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. So far, Art Pharmacy has commitments from over 300 organizations, including Groton Hill Music Center, Councils on Aging, Berkshire Children’s Chorus and Berkshire Community Choir, the Dance Complex, the Danforth Art Museum, the Korean Cultural Society of Boston, Latinx Community Center for Empowerment, Castle of Our Skins, a Jamaica Plain group that celebrates Black artistry in classical music, Jacob’s Pillow, and Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell.
As an example, Appleton said 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 Art Pharmacy (as opposed to a traditional pharmacy such as CVS or Walgreens.) A “care navigator” would create a patient profile based on the person’s clinical and social needs, as well as their arts preferences and experiences, and then make a series of recommendations of activities, which the patient would choose from.
“We know the arts have healing powers — both for physical and mental health,” Governor Maura Healey said in a statement. “Massachusetts is proud to yet again be pioneering a transformative medical innovation with the nation’s first statewide arts prescription solution.”
Mark Shanahan can be reached at mark.shanahan@globe.com. Follow him @MarkAShanahan.
