Partnership Explores Role of Arts in Health Care

From Naseem Miller, writing for the Orlando Sentinel:

The Dr. Phillips Center Florida Hospital School of Arts and Wellness, unveiled on Thursday morning, aims to integrate various forms of art into wellness, whether it’s in the community or in health-care settings to help families, caregivers and people with conditions such as autism, dementia, trauma or anxiety… The center’s effort is part of a national movement — from the military’s National Intrepid Center of Excellence that integrates arts into care of returning soldiers to the Arts & Medicine Institute in Cleveland Clinic — but data and standards are still emerging.

“Art has been in medicine as long as medicine,” said Sunil Iyengar, the research and analysis director of the National Endowment for the Arts. “But I think the research part of it has a long way to go, and we’re going to get there by partnerships [between different sectors] to bring more rigorous studies to bear.”

Read the full article.