Launching The Lancet Global Collection on Arts and Health at NYU
The convergence of diverse fields at the September event was deliberate because evidence rarely travels by itself. The collection demonstrates how the arts contribute to mental, physical, and social health, offering universities a broad lesson: producing knowledge is only part of making research matter. Researchers must consider how evidence enters public conversation, practice, and policy.
Since then, health systems have built extraordinary apparatuses for treating disease but remained less ambitious about creating conditions that help people stay well. Just as health requires thinking beyond the hospital door, research impact requires thinking beyond publication.
As a researcher and drama therapist, Sajnani has spent her career studying how the arts improve health. Evidence now stretches across the life course, showing that music and dramatic play support childhood development while group arts reduce loneliness later in life.
Across 149 systematic reviews, arts-based interventions have shown clear benefits for anxiety, depression, physical functioning, and quality of life.
The arts engage several pathways to health simultaneously: bodies and senses, emotions and imagination, relationships and meaning. They foster perspective-taking, challenge biases, and create dialogue across differences in settings lacking the stigma associated with medical institutions.
Did you know? During exams, a young person in an international study from the Jameel Arts & Health Lab carried a guitar to the park to manage exam pressure. More than 80 per cent of survey participants reported that arts and arts therapies improved their mood and helped them manage stress.
Bringing Diverse Messengers Into Public Health Conversations
Academics are not always best equipped to make research resonate. Artists, clinicians, policymakers, community leaders, and people with lived experience can illuminate what an academic paper cannot capture.
Universities can create these encounters by involving those who might interpret, use, or challenge findings from the outset rather than treating engagement as an afterthought.
Global Policy Shifts and Clinical Infrastructure Integration
While an orchestra should not replace an oncology ward, modern healthcare has separated sectors that are deeply connected in everyday life. Shifting that perception requires making new possibilities socially acceptable by showing where change is already happening.
Clinical guidelines in roughly two dozen countries now include arts-based interventions.
At the state level in the United States, Georgia and California recently passed bipartisan resolutions recognizing the role of the arts in behavioral and brain health. Health systems offer another vital opportunity to embed these ideas in practice.
Economic evidence further widens acceptance.
Frequently Asked Questions About Arts and Health Integration
What is the Jameel Arts & Health Lab-Lancet Global Collection?
It is a global collection launched in September during the UN General Assembly Healing Arts Week at New York University, showing how the arts contribute to mental, physical, and social health across cultures.
How does arts engagement affect biological ageing?
Research among 3,556 UK adults associated weekly arts engagement with a 4 per cent slower pace of biological ageing on one epigenetic measure.
Which health systems currently employ creative arts therapists at scale?
NYC Health + Hospitals employs more licensed creative arts therapists than any other US health system through its Arts in Medicine department.
What are the economic impacts of arts-based health interventions?
A 2025 US analysis estimated that music engagement for individuals with Alzheimer’s disease returns $2.40 per dollar invested, delivering an annual economic value between $5.1 billion and $11.9 billion.
Which countries have recently adopted policies regarding arts and health?
Greece has legislated arts prescribing for mental health, Singapore has recognized the arts in population health, and US states including Georgia and California have passed bipartisan resolutions supporting arts in behavioral and brain health.