AI Insight
This review article proposes strategic roadmaps for advancing research, policy, and practice related to arts engagement and health outcomes. While arts engagement has been universal throughout human history, systematic research on its health benefits has only recently accelerated, particularly in the past decade. The authors advocate for a fundamental principle ensuring all individuals have regular access to arts engagement opportunities, regardless of personal characteristics or geographic location, and outline steps to monitor and achieve this goal.
Why it matters
The roadmaps provide guidance for integrating arts-based interventions into health and wellbeing systems worldwide, potentially expanding treatment and prevention options. Establishing policy frameworks and research priorities could help standardize access to arts engagement as a component of public health infrastructure.
Understand the Science
Despite arts engagement being a ubiquitous human behaviour across human history, research and awareness on the health benefits of engagement are still emerging, accelerating over the past decade. Building on the evidence and research challenges outlined in the first paper of this Lancet collection, this Review puts forward a series of roadmaps for advancing research, policy, and practice to enable appropriate and effective integration of the arts into health and wellbeing systems globally. First and foremost, we advocate for the fundamental principle that all individuals, regardless of their characteristics and location, should have regular opportunities to engage in the arts, proposing policy and research steps to monitor and achieve this goal.
Source: [Review] Developing roadmaps for advancing practice, research, and policy in the arts and health