Disclaimer: This is transcribed using AI. Expect (funny) errors.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:00] I’m Mindy Peterson, and this is Enhance Life with Music, where we explore the ways music makes our lives better. Have you ever thought that your blood pressure came down more from a walk in the woods than from any pill that you’ve ever taken, or that attending a concert calms your anxiety or strengthens your bond with humanity like nothing else. Or that visiting an art museum jumpstarted your sense of inspiration and creativity and motivation. There is scientific evidence that supports all of these health benefits and many more of the arts and neuroesthetics, and these are just a small sampling of activities that can actually be prescribed by your health care provider as part of your wellness plan. At the forefront of this arts and prescription model is Dr. Tasha Golden, our guest today. Dr. Golden is director of research at Johns Hopkins University’s International Arts + Mind Lab and adjunct faculty for the University of Florida’s Center for Arts and Medicine. Doctor Golden is both an artist and health scientist. She has a PhD in public Health Sciences and has published extensively on the impacts of the arts, on health and well-being, and as an in-demand speaker and consultant. As a career artist, she is singer songwriter for the critically acclaimed band Ellery, and her songs appear in feature films and TV dramas. This bio definitely falls under the category of, “When does this person ever sleep?!” She’s here today to discuss a recently released, groundbreaking resource she collaborated on that is a guide for the Arts on Prescription model. The publication is called Arts on Prescription: A Field Guide for US Communities. Welcome to enhance Life with music, Tasha.
Tasha Golden: [00:01:52] Oh thank you Mindy. That was so such a kind introduction. And I’m so excited to be here to talk with you.
Mindy Peterson: [00:01:57] I’m so excited to have you here and talk about this resource, this concept, this arts and prescription model is not well known. And I’m so excited to sort of increase the exposure, a little bit of it and let people know more about it. So for people who aren’t familiar with this concept, how would you describe what it is and what the process is?
Tasha Golden: [00:02:20] Yes. Well, arts and prescription, it is in a way exactly what it sounds like. We kind of chose this name for the guide because when somebody says arts and prescription, what most people picture is, you know, maybe a doctor standing there with a script pad writing out like, go to a museum. And that’s not exactly what this is. But that’s not not what this is either. And so we kind of wanted people to have that image in their mind of that’s that is something that’s possible and something that is happening. So to describe what this model of care is, just like you have said in your introduction, if you imagine that arts has lots of different benefits for our health, really what the idea behind arts and Prescription is, is looking at, okay, what are these benefits of arts, of cultural practices, of nature? And how can we integrate those into our more traditional concepts of what health care is? If we know that there are things in your community that you could be accessing that could benefit your health and well-being, why not make those available through our traditional health care systems, which could make them more accessible, which could improve people’s obviously their health, well-being, their healing times, their recovery for various things. So it’s kind of about taking this accumulating research over the last, especially couple of decades, where we’re learning more and more about how arts and nature and cultural practices affect our health and and being like, okay, what’s the so what if we know that these benefit our health? What are we going to do about it? And this model is one thing that we can do about it, which is to kind of reintegrate these community practices, these personal practices, into the way that we do health in the US. And this kind of thing has been going on in other countries for quite some time.
Mindy Peterson: [00:03:52] Yeah, that is so interesting. And in this guide, I absolutely loved the foreword. It’s by Christopher Bailey and it’s it’s concise. It’s not overly long but so powerful I mean just really packs a punch with all of the information he covers in there. And one thing he mentions is that the concept of prescribing arts, culture and nature goes back to at least ancient Egypt and presumably has its roots in ritual practice in prehistory. And I had no idea that that practice went back that far. That was really fascinating.
Tasha Golden: [00:04:26] Oh, yeah. And Christopher Bailey is such a fascinating person. You know, give him a follow on social media. He’s the arts and health lead for the World Health Organization. And we are so glad to have his voice in this guide. And yes, absolutely, especially if we think about, you know, post enlightenment. And there has been this, you know, kind of almost an effort to separate the mind and body and, you know, separate the sciences from the arts. All of that is kind of arbitrary. Ultimately, when humans, you know, we evolve to make and share art for a reason. I always say, you know, if if we didn’t, if it served us in no way we would have abandoned these practices millennia ago. Right? So obviously it’s doing something for us and we ignore that to our detriment sometimes at our peril. So it is really important and helpful to think back to, okay, humans have been aware that this is useful to them in their healing and their their ideas of medicine and recovery for a really long time. And we just have kind of gotten away from that. And how can we reorient to get back to the ways that we’ve known for centuries, um, the things that humans do in order to. Well into thrive.
Mindy Peterson: [00:05:31] Mhm. Arts and health is evidence based. It’s science based. Tell us about some of the research that does support the use of arts and prescription. And just some of the key outcomes or findings that support its efficacy.
Tasha Golden: [00:05:45] Well I will say that arts and prescription is an emerging model in the US. I led an evaluation of the first large model of arts and prescription, which was in Massachusetts. Um, our peer reviewed study of that just came out in January of 2023. So the evidence that arts and prescription as a model is effective is still very, um, it’s still in its kind of like promising stages. This is something that we’re kind of trying to tease apart. And you can go grab that peer reviewed article. I think it’s open access. We can we can get that to you if you all are interested in.
Mindy Peterson: [00:06:16] But yeah, I could link to that in the show notes.
Tasha Golden: [00:06:18] Yes, absolutely. I’ll make sure that you have that. Uh, but the evidence around generally arts benefits for health, which I know that your podcast has touched on so many times. You know, we know that the arts have been shown to reduce loneliness, which is a growing epidemic right now in the US. We know that it can help address isolation and give people a greater sense of connection to their community. We know that it can reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety. It can help people’s cognition and attention. Um, it’s been shown to also support physical health, even everything from like just stimulating movement. If you imagine people dancing to also being used in hospitals and clinics to help ease pain. Um, also being used to help improve mobility and coordination, even sleep. So like I said earlier, it’s kind of like our evidence for the model itself, since the model is so emergent, is kind of negligible at this point. We’re working on it, right? We’re developing that. It’s kind of an exciting time to be in the science, in the sciences, in this work. But as far as the science that it’s based on, that has been emerging for a really long time. So there’s a lot to go on. And I will say that we share this in common with a lot of the things that you might think of as far as community referrals, like if you imagine a physician might also refer their patient to housing assistance or support groups and things like that. And the evidence base for those is also always, um, being grown because it’s different from community to community and from resources. The resources that are available in one place might not be the same as the other places. So the effectiveness can change. And that’s going to be true for arts and prescription as a model of care. Also, we’ll have to look at how to study this, recognizing that it’s going to be it’s going to have some different outcomes depending on where it’s implemented and how it’s implemented.
Mindy Peterson: [00:08:00] Sure. Well, in in health care, one size fits all generally is not a good practice. So keeping things as individualized as possible usually is the best way to go. I’ll go back to that foreword by Christopher Bailey. He points out. In that foreword, he says the evidence that the arts actually cures anything is scant, but the evidence that it helps us heal and thrive is abundant. He goes on to say this is a drawback of the use of the word prescribing, as it may suggest a misleading expectation of a cure. But health, according to the World Health Organization’s definition, is about more than the absence of disease or infirmity. It is about attaining the highest possible level of physical, mental and social well-being. Similarly, our definition of mental health is not solely about the absence of mental illness, but about helping us cope with the everyday stresses of life, raising our capabilities and skills, being more productive, and contributing to community and connection. Wow.
Tasha Golden: [00:09:04] Yeah, we spent a long time in the guide. Maybe it doesn’t feel like a long time to readers, but we really wanted to lay out that this guide is rooted in, in this definition of health that the W.H.O. established in the 40s, which said that that health is not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, health is complete mental, physical and social well-being. And I’m always pointing out that’s a really high bar, that word complete, complete physical, mental and social well-being. And that’s from, again, the 1940s. And, you know, when people think about health or even if you just open up your phone and look up emojis, if you type in health for emoji, it’s going to pull up all these medical emojis. Like, we’ve really kind of reduced our concept of health over the years to this prevention of something that we don’t want, or to helping us heal from things that are already happening that we don’t want to be happening. Right. And that’s so necessary. That is absolutely, incredibly, critically important. But our public imagination around what health is hasn’t really maintained that idea that it’s also complete well-being. And, and some of my work, you know, traveling around, I’m able to ask so many different audiences, you know, what is well-being and get so many different kinds of responses. But the fascinating thing about asking people to define well-being is that they’ll often define it in ways that indicate that suffering still exists in the midst of well-being.
Tasha Golden: [00:10:21] So they’ll say things like well-being means having people that you can talk to, and you’re having a hard day, or knowing that you have worth no matter what happens, and I could. Go on and on with some of these different definitions, but implied in each of those ones, even that I just shared, is that something is going wrong that you need somebody to help with. Uh huh. Something is going wrong that you still need to know that you are valuable and worthwhile. And I think that’s the important thing about well-being. That’s that, uh, Christopher Bailey was pulling out in his foreword that you read is that it’s not so much that health is not just the absence of what we don’t want, it’s the presence of something that we do want, even sometimes in the midst of our suffering. And a lot of times, your listeners will not be surprised that when people really dig into these definitions of well-being, a lot of times what they come up with falls under the umbrella, the general umbrella of arts and culture, of the idea of thriving and feeling like you have a whole and meaningful life, even though that life includes suffering as all human lives must, you know.
Mindy Peterson: [00:11:19] Yeah, well, and what’s encouraging about that definition is even if you have a terminal illness, you can still sort of fall within that umbrella of thriving in spite of what the challenges are. It’s not the absence of a diagnosis. It’s not the absence of disease. It’s learning resilience and and finding hope and encouragement and well-being in spite of the challenges that you’re dealing with.
Tasha Golden: [00:11:45] Yeah. And I always, um, you know, I do some training, I do trainings in mental health and trauma informed practice, and I’m always encouraging people to not hear this. And I don’t think that your listeners are, but to not hear the idea of well-being and resilience as an excuse for not doing the things that we can to to, in fact reduce suffering and, um, eradicate illness and things like that. It’s not it’s not like the argument is, well, people can figure out ways to thrive even if they are really suffering. So let’s just we don’t have to actually fix their suffering. They’ll just figure it out and become resilient. That is definitely not what we’re talking about. Especially for for me, in public health, a lot of my work is around health equity and how do we create structures and systems where more and more people can thrive. But I think it’s also exciting to consider when it comes to the role of arts and health, how often arts and culture has been at the forefront of social movements as well, and collective action as well. That helps us to create systems and structures and policies that help us to and even just, you know, fundraising and other kinds of efforts that allow us to do the full spectrum of work. So really, what we’re, um, what I’m excited about, about the idea of arts and prescription or this larger idea of just recognizing the role of arts and culture and nature and well-being in our human experience is that we can address this spectrum, that we do want to address that absence of disease component. And we also want to make sure that people have a way to thrive.
Mindy Peterson: [00:13:09] Um, you mentioned loneliness, and I know that is a huge issue as we’re recording this. I recently attended an online stream that Dartmouth College hosted with the current surgeon General and all of his living predecessors, which it was a historic event. It’s only the second time in history that all of these individuals have gathered together like this. And the last time was like 25 years ago. So it was really interesting. The focus of their gathering was how to address the crisis of mental illness that is affecting the people in our country, especially our youth. And that was a key point that came up was loneliness and how this isn’t just a US phenomenon, but it’s global. People are experiencing a crisis of loneliness, and some of it has to do with social media and media in general and technology. Historically, we needed our pack, our tribe, our community to survive. And now you can have groceries delivered to your doorstep and never leave your house and connect with anybody. But it really has become an epidemic and the arts are uniquely connecting and bonding with humanity. Can you give us some examples of some of the different things that can be prescribed, either to connect people and ease loneliness, or for any other number of of reasons that something might be prescribed? I know in my sort of introduction, I mentioned walking in in the woods or going to a museum or attending a concert. Give us some other examples of things that can be or have been prescribed.
Tasha Golden: [00:14:55] Yeah, this is such an interesting point about loneliness. And sometimes in our culture, sometimes that issue of addressing loneliness is that we kind of require as humans the occasion to get together. Like you can say it’s important to have social connections, okay. But then like, what’s the reason going to be if somebody’s going to like, call you and be like, let’s get together? Usually we were, okay, what’s the reason? Are we going to go have a meal? Are we going to go see a movie? Are we going to. So a lot of times arts and cultural practices, that’s the role that they that’s a role that they play in the human experience is the occasion for which humans get together. And. They are being used in that kind of way by people who are prescribing and referring these kinds of practices. So some examples, some physicians who learn that somebody is interested in a particular practice, maybe this person is dealing with depression and they’re not really getting out very much. Or you know, maybe they’re in a new city and they don’t really know anybody yet. But the physician learns that they’re interested in art. They might recommend maybe versus a museum visit, which can be a kind of singular process. They might recommend an art class or a music class, depending what the person’s interests are, where they can maybe go and see the same people week after week and have an experience like that where they’re meeting people. But it’s not a strictly social meeting. It’s not like telling people to, you know, go to a bar and hang out, which can be incredibly intimidating. But it’s in a kind of structured environment of an arts class. And you can imagine that working for lots of different things, not just a music class or painting class, of course, there’s so many different examples of that.
Tasha Golden: [00:16:24] But then we also learned about pediatricians, for example, using this in an interesting way in our study in Massachusetts, I heard from a pediatrician who was saying that they visited with a parent who expressed an inability to kind of connect with their teenager, that maybe the teenager was using their screen a lot, or they just weren’t having opportunities to really find out what was going on in that teenager’s life. And the pediatrician typically wouldn’t have very much that they could do about that. They would maybe give some examples and examples of what the parent could say or try to talk about, but in this case, they were able to say, okay, well, what if I give you tickets to a park pass or to this museum and then you, you and your teenager can go hike together, or you can go to this museum together and have this kind of novel experience where maybe you’re not on a screen, but you can either talk together while you’re there or debrief about it afterwards. How was that for you? But just have this different way to connect. So we’re seeing people use it for families to reconnect with one another. And then as a last example that I really love, we heard from mental health therapists that had used, um, they were connected in Massachusetts with a local museum. And that museum, when they gave out tickets to the health care, um, the therapists they also gave that gave away coupons for free coffees in their cafe at that museum. So, um, a perfect therapist. Yes.
Mindy Peterson: [00:17:44] Described combo.
Tasha Golden: [00:17:46] It’s an amazing combo. A therapist described having a, um, a client who just wasn’t really able to leave their house very much or didn’t feel like they could really call on friends and make a connection. And so what the therapist recommended was like, here, let me give you two of these tickets to the local museum, call a friend and invite them to go with you. So they they have you have this kind of like reason or occasion to get together, right, that the friend might value because otherwise that would cost whatever it was, $20 or something. And then, you know, you have this coupon for a coffee, so go to the museum and then sit down together and just catch up on what’s going on in each other’s lives. And that’s such a simple and intuitive idea of a way to consider what a museum visit can be with a friend. But before the existence of that arts and prescription program, that therapist didn’t have that as an option. Like what would they have maybe recommended? So people are using it in such interesting ways that once you hear about it, it’s intuitive. But on the front end, we weren’t necessarily touting it to be used that way.
Mindy Peterson: [00:18:43] Yeah, well, with that particular example, there’s a couple other things that are coming to my mind. And if it’s somebody who maybe feels they don’t have any friends or is just really timid about initiating something like that, it might be helpful to have this excuse of my doctor told me I had to do this. You know, I mean, as parents, we’ve used that excuse with our kids before, just in the sense of, hey, if you’re at a party and you don’t feel comfortable, blame it on us. You know, like, say, my parents said I have to leave at this time or my parents are on their way, their way to pick me up because I have to leave, you know, like, blame it on us. Yeah. So, I mean, the patients could be like, hey, my doctor’s making me do this, you know, just give them an excuse to make it happen. Which. And then the other aspect of that too, is whoever they’re asking and inviting to accompany them kind of feels like, oh, you know, even if this isn’t my first choice of what to do, I’m, I’m helping this person out because their doctor is expecting them to do this. They’re making them do this. I’ll I’ll help them out, you know?
Tasha Golden: [00:19:43] Yeah. And of course, on that side of the client, you know, sometimes, um, our suspicion that somebody wouldn’t want to hang out with us or that it’s incredibly awkward to ask them to do so, is there they don’t share that that sentiment at all. Like you, you wind up inviting them to do something and they’re like, yeah, cool. This sounds really great. I would love to go to this game with you. And so, um, sometimes just getting across, just like you said, maybe have a few different motivators or excuses that kind of get you to take that step and then find out that it was it was perhaps easier than you expected. And yeah, you know, we heard from that same therapist that, you know, that’s something that they often use with their clients, whether it was this particular client and that kind of circumstance or others. But they, you know, once they go to the museum, it’s like they come back for their next session and it’s like, what did you think? What came up for you? What did you notice? You know, it kind of can help. Enrich their, um, their dialogue and talk therapy as well.
Mindy Peterson: [00:20:33] Sure. I’m thinking one great option would be tickets to some sort of comedy thing, because there you’re getting smiles, you’re getting laughter, and there’s that biochemistry that changes when we smile and laugh. So I think that would be a great opportunity. And again, as you mentioned earlier, the assets and the applications available in each community are going to be different. So obviously obviously people will be tailoring this according to what is available in their community. Let’s talk just a little bit more about this publication. Like I mentioned, it’s called Arts on Prescription A Field Guide for US communities. It was released in September. It was a collaboration between University of Florida Center for Arts and Medicine, you and your colleagues at Mass Cultural Council. It provides a roadmap for developing these arts and prescription programs. Who is this guide for? Is it just for medical professionals? Tell us who it’s for.
Tasha Golden: [00:21:35] Oh, I love this question and I’m so glad that you asked. We so essentially, Mass Cultural Council launched the first statewide arts and prescription program in the US in 2020, and then we did this evaluation of it in 2021 to 2022. And we learned so much. And we developed a report. Like I mentioned, there was a peer reviewed article that came from that. And the program itself has been able through a lot of trial and error and just learning over time and also sharing their own findings with each other. They were able to learn so much over, over the years of this program, and Mass Cultural Council wanted to take all of that and kind of create a how to not for academics, not for just health professionals, but for anybody in the community. It could be a clinic. It could be, you know, a dance studio, it could be a solo artist. But anybody in a community who’s interested in intersection of the arts and culture and nature with health and health care systems, that they could read this and say, like, okay, I can understand what are the components that are necessary for this? What are the things I’m going to have to think through? And they could establish it. And initially it was like, let’s create a how to document for Massachusetts, for future organizations that are going to be involved in this Culture RX program in Massachusetts. But of course, quickly was like, why would we only want Massachusetts to benefit from this? Yeah. Like let’s let’s do something so that every community in the country doesn’t have to start from scratch, because ultimately, yes, ultimately you are going to have to start from scratch in a lot of different things because like we mentioned, every community is different.
Tasha Golden: [00:23:04] Your partners are going to be different. Your your assets that you can link people to are going to be different. So you’re going to have to do so much legwork already. So don’t do any more than you already have to do. Let us let us at least give you a foundation so that you can stand on the shoulders of this initial work. So we really did write this with the the average Joe person in mind, from artists to health care providers to anybody in between who doesn’t identify as either of those but just finds this intriguing. Um, also wanted it to be picked up by patient groups who might want to advocate for like, oh, I want this to be part of my patient experience, and it’s not yet what can we do? So we really laid it out to be as accessible as possible. It’s an enormous document. It’s like 119 pages or something. But we didn’t write it to be read from front to back. We wrote it so that you could dip in and okay, where am I at in this journey? I can learn a little bit about the background of this and what the heck it is in the first chapter. And then from there I can, you know, go to the places in the guide that really speak to where I’m at in the journey of setting up this kind of program in my community, and then, of course, revisit it as as things develop and as you need further insight and more resources.
Mindy Peterson: [00:24:10] Mhm. Well, you mentioned the size 119 pages. It’s a perfect size really because it’s not overwhelming. I mean people read books all the time that are 300 and some pages. You know, it’s not overwhelming, but there is so much information there that anyone who wants to dig deeper into any number of topics, there’s information on where they can find more information, more resources. You have tons of appendices with more information, tons of links. So that’s really just an amazing amount of treasure at people’s fingertips. For those who want more, I want to point out, too, that this is free. This is a free digital download. We’ll we’ll have a link. We’ll have a link in the show notes. And even if you just download it to read the forward, do it because it’s so inspiring to read that forward within the electronic document. It’s a PDF. Within that PDF, there’s links where you can just really easily go to the table of contents. It’s very clear and well laid out and organized. You can just click the clickable links and it will take you directly to whatever chapter or section or appendices appendix that you want to go to. So really user friendly and easy to get around with it. And like you said, you don’t read it, start to, you know, cover to cover. One sitting. Just read the section that is of interest to you. I just want to point out that one of the appendix has potential funding sources, information on that. Another one has templates for patient referrals. This is a very practical, hands on, user friendly guide, so kudos to all of you who put it together. It’s fantastic. Thank you. Yeah. The the guide does emphasize, like we said, a very individualized, person centered approach. I could see this really empowering individuals to take an active role in their healing process. Can you comment on that or tell us what your thoughts are on that?
Tasha Golden: [00:26:10] Well, yeah, I think a big theme that you’ll notice in the guide when you when you all get it, is this idea of developing programs that are that center the community, that center the end user. Like if you think about, I want to develop this program in my community, the people who it’s going to be most who are most going to be affected by it should be really leading it, you know, really informing it from beginning to end. And part of the reason for that is that you would want people to be in a situation where if they’re getting a referral, it’s going to be to something that’s relevant to them, to a place where they feel safe and included, where if it’s going to be an arts based thing instead of a nature based thing, that the art is representative of them and their history, their identity, their culture. And so you really need those folks to be at the forefront of choosing what these programs look like and what they involve. And then if you have done that, to your point, you you are giving patients and clients across healthcare, across social care services a chance to really feel like there’s an option available to them that is of interest to them, that feels like it’s incredibly relevant and meaningful to them, versus becoming just yet another thing where a doctor’s told you, you got to do something, and now, like you’re trying to figure out, okay, how do I get how do I get more steps in each day? Or like, how do I make sure I floss like, you know, and we even heard from health care providers who were saying usually like they told us that usually we are in the position of telling people to do things that they don’t want to have to do or to stop doing things that they really love doing, like drink less caffeine or whatever.
Tasha Golden: [00:27:36] And, um, yeah. And uh, they were like, this is the first time that we’ve been in a position to just give them something that they wanted already. And one physician described it as like, it feels like prescribing beauty, and we’re prescribing joy. And that was so meaningful to them as health care providers to, I think, to your point, to give people to open an opportunity or an invitation to people, that is something that they would maybe already want to do in their lives. Because like we said early on, humans, the idea that art might support your healing or nature might support your healing is not at all new. And humans have accessed these things pretty intuitively or through their cultural leaders for centuries. But the reality is that at this point, those opportunities are not equitably available to people and arts, and prescription becomes a way to, like I said, open an invitation for people to do some of the things and some of the activities that they might have already been choosing to do if the resource was available to them. Yeah.
Mindy Peterson: [00:28:33] And you’ve mentioned that this is very intuitive for patients and providers alike. You’re not getting any pushback from providers and doctors. They’re really, um, finding this intuitive. It’s not like, okay, one more thing I need to learn how to do. It’s like, oh, we’d love to do this. We just need the infrastructure to do it. Some sort of a system in place, a container in place to make it happen. And this provides it.
Tasha Golden: [00:29:02] Yeah, that’s been a surprising thing for people. I often get asked, you know, what has the pushback been among providers or how do you address provider skepticism? And it is so funny because I’m like, I am sure that there are providers out there who who think this sounds completely zany and wouldn’t want to have anything to do with it, but I haven’t met any of those people, and I also haven’t heard from them. Uh, across the board, the healthcare providers, the social care providers that we have talked to, even educators and school counselors, just lots of different situations where providers are in their communities across the board. They tend to see this as, oh, this gives me tools I didn’t have before. And I think part of the reason is that arts and prescription right now is not yet. This model of care that we are presenting here is not about let’s prescribe art in place of something else that we might have otherwise given you. There are plenty of studies. I want to be really clear. There are plenty of studies that are looking at the extent to which an arts based practice and nature based practice might, in some cases, be able to replace medication or replace other forms of therapies.
Tasha Golden: [00:30:03] And those studies are going on and there’s a lot of interest in them and they’re important. But at this point, we are not presenting arts and prescription as a model of care, where we are replacing treatment as usual, which is what we call it in health care. We are looking at how do we expand what health care has offered in the past in order to again include that idea of well-being, to include some of these social needs related not just to like social connection, but these basically. Non-clinical needs that people have in their lives. How can arts and culture and nature help to address those? And thus far, providers haven’t had any of those tools at all in their tool sets or really, really limited. And so so far they’re just seeing this as like, thank you for expanding my tool set. I would have loved to offer this and couldn’t before and now I can.
Mindy Peterson: [00:30:48] Yeah, I love that concept of just expanding their tool set, their tool kit, and enhancing what they’re already doing and already able to offer to affect a more holistic well-being. Right? So enhancing enhancing life with music. Exactly. Enhancing life with the arts. Exactly what kind of funding is there for this? What kind of insurance reimbursement is in place, and what are the most commonly available forms of funding?
Tasha Golden: [00:31:19] This is such a big question, and it’s such a big concern as nobody will probably be surprised when this concept comes up. It’s like, okay, who’s paying for it? Yeah. And we’ve seen lots of different models. So in Massachusetts, the program up till about right now, they’re having a transition right now. But the program has been funded by Mass Cultural Council, which is the State Arts Council. And they give away grants. The way that it’s functioned so far is that they’ve given grants to the cultural organizations, kind of like in a reimbursement model. So not dissimilar from what insurance companies often do. But like, these cultural organizations are being reimbursed by the State Arts Council for the services that they provide to patients and clients of health and social care systems. We are seeing other models in place. Philanthropy is a big deal, just as it has been in in Massachusetts. But we’re also seeing some other models. For example, in new Jersey, there’s a partnership between Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield and the new Jersey Performing Arts Center, where these arts and culture experiences are being covered by horizon for their members who are, as they call it, at risk of overusing their insurance. So they have an algorithm that identifies these folks, and then they make these arts and culture opportunities available to them.
Tasha Golden: [00:32:30] And then there’s a company called Art pharmacy that’s a for profit company based in Atlanta that’s really spearheading a lot of work to shift health care systems into social prescribing and arts and prescription. And they have relationships with really large insurance companies where they are working in lots of communities in various states across the country to ensure that these kinds of practices can be reimbursed by Medicaid, Medicare and other insurance companies. So it’s a really early time in the work. It’s exciting, but it’s also there’s lots of different pathways. And I always tell people, you know, just because in your community, there’s not a clear way in which insurance is going to provide this experience. That doesn’t mean that you can’t begin. You can. We have plenty of models of this where the way that they began was with philanthropy, with a grantor starting off by, you know, start small, take small chunks, um, take small steps as you can. And oftentimes that increases the interest in the local region that might be able to get the interest of a larger funder or of insurance companies that are like, okay, I want to give this a shot. This does look like it’s effective for our patients or our clients that we would be serving.
Mindy Peterson: [00:33:39] Are well, I am so excited by this topic, and I knew going into this conversation, there would be way more questions that I would want to ask than what we would have would have time for. But I want to squeeze one last one in. I know that the guide places importance on cross-sector collaborations and kind of bridging the arts, health care, public health. Can you just elaborate a little bit on the benefits of this collaboration, and share some examples that you’ve seen of successful partnerships and specifically in, if possible, in the music world? Just because that’s what our focus is? Obviously, the arts on prescription model encompasses all the arts and neuroaesthetics and nature. But can you elaborate on any successful partnerships involving music?
Tasha Golden: [00:34:26] Oh, the idea of collaboration, especially across sectors, is a huge passion of mine. Just launched a course actually, um, called Think Bigger to help people make partnerships that, uh, that reach across sectors. Because for me, as a, as an artist myself, as a musician myself, so much of what I found to be effective in my work, even when I was in the music industry specifically had to do with the partnerships that I made outside of music and outside of the music industry. And I founded a program for girls that are incarcerated called Project Uncaged. And so much of the work that we were able to do for them required us to reach across sectors, to work with people of, obviously in juvenile justice, to work with literary publishers, to work with performing artists and spoken word artists. So, um, just in my own lived experience, the idea of these cross-sector partnerships can make your art, make your creativity go so much further in. It makes you ask different questions of yourself. So for any creatives that are listening, it’s not just that partnership can enhance your work and impact on a kind of business level, although absolutely can. But it’s. Also like as an artist, as a creative, it grows so much. So the Arts and Prescription is just this incredible example of the value of working across sectors where, you know, basically the idea of a sector is completely constructed itself, right? Like we the idea that the human experience, like you’re going to make policy over here, but then make music over here and then like learn over here. The idea that those are three different things is, is kind of wild anyway, so Arts and Prescription is a really lovely example of people deciding, like, let’s not maintain this illusion that we can slice and dice up the human experience and come out whole on the other side.
Tasha Golden: [00:36:06] Let’s make a make a model that embraces the idea that these things have always been connected and they can continue to be connected. And there are some really beautiful partnerships I’m trying to think of, like music, musical ones in particular. There are so many partnerships that haven’t been called arts and prescription or social prescribing, but where musicians have been in hospitals, for example, or in clinical spaces, playing in waiting rooms or playing for patients. And we know that those activities have make a difference in people’s subjective well-being, their their experience as a patient, sometimes even their healing times and their pain levels. So those are really beautiful partnerships and also using people’s platforms. The beautiful thing about art in these kinds of partnerships, at least from my perspective, is that you can often use your platform, including, if you are a musical, uh, a music studio, a musician, a choir, whatever it might be to not only offer that service that you provide, I think of it as a service where people can engage with music, but you can also use those platforms to educate and share what’s possible. When we break down these walls in our silos and reach across and do something really new, so it can kind of be like both providing a resource and providing an occasion in a way to educate folks about that resource and give them a chance to connect with each other and move things forward. Um.
Mindy Peterson: [00:37:24] One more resource I’m just going to point out is I noticed on your website when I was on there last night that you have a link to download your free e-book called Arts and Health for big ways to improve health through the Arts. So if listeners are interested in yet another free resource to learn more about how the arts can improve health and sort of imagine some next steps, I encourage you to go to Tasha’s website. I’ll include the link, of course, in the show notes. This has been so fascinating, and I’m sure a lot of listeners will be ready to dig in more. And I hope that listeners, if you do, you’ll let me know what the results are. And I can pass that along to Tasha, because as I mentioned, I’m really excited by this concept and I’m a big fan of holistic health in general, and for sure, the ways that arts and neuroaesthetics and nature can enhance our overall health and well-being. Well, Tasha, I ask all my guests to close out our conversation with a musical ending a coda by sharing a song or story about a moment that music enhanced your life. Do you have a song or story that you can close us out with today?
Tasha Golden: [00:38:35] Yes, I was thinking about this, and, um, a lot of times people ask me, you know, why? Or how did you go from being a touring musician? I toured full time for a lot of years. Uh, how did you wind up being a public health scientist out of that? And, you know, that is a long and winding path. But there is also a direct line from one song in particular to the work that I do now. And, um, it’s a song that I initially wrote for some women in my life, uh, who had been, um, who were survivors of domestic violence. And what I saw in their lives was that, um, they they seemed to live with this fear that somehow what happened to them was their fault, or they should have done something differently. And that seemed like, in addition to the suffering that they that that was their experience, there was this additional suffering of, of kind of the shame or the guilt around it that they that it was somehow their fault. And so I wrote this song called You Did Everything Right. And I didn’t think at first that I would share it with anyone. And when I decided to put it on a set for a show, that was the song that everybody lined up afterwards wanting to talk about, and they shared so many of their own personal stories of abuse, histories of depression and histories. Um, a lot of them saying that they had never told anybody else before. And so I kind of made this commitment to myself and to my, my partner that we had a band like, I want to play this song at every show from now on, uh, it’s apparently doing something.
Tasha Golden: [00:40:07] It’s it’s igniting some kind of conversation. And what I saw is that the same phenomenon with that song and other ones, of course, any any musicians out there who write songs or perform, you know, that people will often share things with you at shows in response to what you’ve shared from the stage. Uh, but what I noticed around the world was that this phenomenon was so common where people would share things with me, especially. Related to this song that they had never shared with anybody before, and I couldn’t help wondering why. Why does that happen? What is what is it about a song or a music venue, or about me that makes these stories speakable for the first time? And then why is that possible in the music space and not in other places? And what can we do to bridge the gap between what’s obviously so possible in a song or a music venue and a music space, and what’s obviously not yet possible, and all of these other places where, you know, these folks who shared with me after shows had obviously never told a doctor or a therapist I was the first person they’d ever told. So there’s clearly some kind of gap there that we have to address. And that question of how do we how do we fill that gap is what led me over the years to the work that I do now.
Transcribed by Sonix.ai