Doctors can now prescribe culture through Mass. ‘Art Pharmacy’ program

Health

Massachusetts has the first statewide social prescription program.

Massachusetts is now home to the first statewide social prescription program in the nation, and its champions do not think it will take long for other states to follow suit.

“While social prescribing has been active for decades in other parts of the world with socialized national health systems, no commercial entity has been able to scale social prescribing — as a care delivery model within the US healthcare system — until now,” Art Pharmacy CEO Chris Appleton told Boston.com.

Mass Cultural Council has partnered with Art Pharmacy, a private organization, to enable health care providers to prescribe participation in arts and culture activities and other community-based resources to “promote whole person health,” according to a press release.

The program is launching statewide through a collaboration with Mass General Brigham, Michael Bobbitt, executive director of Mass Cultural Council, told Boston.com.

Bobbitt said he hopes other health providers sign up to participate so that the program can one day be available to all residents, but that could take up to 10 years to implement, he said.

Under the program, participating health providers can prescribe a patient an arts prescription, and they would then work with a care navigator to figure out their specific needs, Bobbitt said.

“The care navigator will use the information they get from their conversation with the patient or the member and then they will make recommendations with the patient,” he said. “The patient gets 12 doses of arts and culture.”

Social prescribing is already underway internationally, but the new health care program is the first of its kind in the U.S. Art Pharmacy has an “explicit goal” of “revolutionizing US healthcare with social prescribing,” Appleton said.

Art Pharmacy is active in Georgia, California, and Massachusetts, he said, and the company expects “several additional states to come online in the very near future” as it continues its national rollout.

“The basic premise is that health care providers could prescribe arts activities to their patients to support their health care needs,” Bobbitt said. “You go to a doctor and the doctor diagnoses you and then writes your prescription that gives you and your family or you and your partner tickets to the museum, a class, or to the theater.”

There are over 400 arts organizations in the program database, according to Bobbitt.

The statewide initiative comes after a three-year pilot program, which sustained positive reviews from health care professionals, cultural organizations, and patients, the council said.

Bobbitt said the program has received a positive response from health service workers, noting one who said the program “felt like they were giving out Willy Wonka golden tickets.”

“They’ve been very excited about this,” he said of health service workers. “They were relieved that they had something that they could give patients.”

Gov. Maura Healey expressed her support for the program and said the “arts have healing powers” for both physical and mental health.

“Massachusetts is proud to yet again be pioneering a transformative medical innovation with the nation’s first statewide arts prescription solution,” she said in a statement.

Members can be connected to a range of art disciplines, Appleton said, such as visual arts, music, theater, dance, and creative writing across many different “participation modes.”

“Art Pharmacy’s technology aggregates all the offerings in an area and matches members to arts and culture engagements best suited for their needs,” Appleton said.

Bobbitt said he hopes the program becomes a “mainstream” public health solution and elevates the arts sector as an “essential health and human service.”

“Arts organizations have new streams of revenue because it’s coming from health care, because it’s helping health care do their job,” he said. “In my mind, this is social innovation on par with some of the world’s best social innovations.”