[00:00:00] Pam Uzzell: Do you believe art can change the world? So do I! On this show, we meet artists whose work is doing just that. Welcome to Art Heals All Wounds. I'm your host, Pam Uzzell.
[00:00:47] I'm curious, how many of you listening knew exactly what you wanted to do with your life when you were young? Are you doing it? Why or why not? From the [00:01:00] time I was very little, I knew with absolute certainty that I was going to be a veterinarian. And here I am many years later, a podcaster, filmmaker, art instructor...So, what happened? I'm so
[00:01:20] glad you're joining me on this season dedicated to the theme of belonging. Did you get derailed from a childhood dream? And do you feel that it actually is okay? If that happened to you and you want to share your story for me to share on a future episode, go to my website, arthealsallwoundspodcast. com and leave me a voicemail.
[00:01:42] I'll play your story in a future episode.
[00:01:48] My guest today is Tasha Golden. She was introduced to me by Susan Magsamen, a guest from season four. Tasha Golden is director of the International Arts and Mind Lab at Johns [00:02:00] Hopkins Medicine. She recently led the creation of Arts on Prescription: A Field Guide for US Communities. This field guide shows how medicine can be revolutionized to take us beyond just being free from disease to experiencing well being in our bodies, our minds, and our communities.
[00:02:22] When I imagine how the world could look if everyone had access to this, well, let me just say that having Tasha on the show means a lot. I wanted to hear her story of coming to this work, and I was really surprised that as important as this work is, she had a dream before that. Something she really wanted
[00:02:44] from the time she was very young. To be a singer songwriter. And she was. She is. Actually, a really good one. Her experience made her realize that songs and music could [00:03:00] create a powerful sense of belonging and connection. You'll hear her story about what happened with her first dream that set her on a different path.
[00:03:09] The path to getting her PhD as a health scientist, but the lessons she personally learned as an artist about community, about equity, and about art's power to heal, have continued to guide her as she creates work that pushes medicine to aim higher.
[00:03:31] Hi Tasha, thank you so much for being on Art Heals All Wounds. Can you start by introducing yourself just by telling us who you are and what you
[00:03:40] do?
[00:03:41] Tasha Golden:
[00:03:41] Sure, thank you. I'm so glad to join you, Pam. Thank you so much for having me. I'm Dr. Tasha Golden. I'm a singer songwriter turned public health scientist and now research impacts of arts on humans.
[00:03:55] I talk about what is it that we need for our well being in order to thrive, all these different kinds of [00:04:00] things. I spend a lot of my time as the Director of Research for the International Arts and Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and adjunct faculty for the University of Florida Center for Arts and Medicine and get to speak and consult with organizations all over the world helping them figure out how to use the science of arts health impacts To further their goals.
[00:04:21] Pam Uzzell: Wow. First, I have to say that I am so excited that you're a singer songwriter In my next lifetime, that's what I want to be. I want to pick up on some language you just used, because I've read your, I want to get the name right, the Arts on Prescription Field Guide. And one of the things that I liked best about this, Of course, the whole concept is wonderful, but the language in it was really exciting to me.
[00:04:47] You talked about health and well being. And in this field guide, there is this emphasis on saying, and you can help me if I don't quote this exactly, that health is not just [00:05:00] the absence of illness.
[00:05:01] Tasha Golden: Yeah. Yeah, there's the WHO definition of health from the 40s, where they said that health is complete physical, mental, social well being, which is
[00:05:12] a pretty high bar. That word complete there is always so fascinating to me. Like what a high bar we've given ourselves. So complete physical, mental, and social well being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. And it's really interesting, especially from a public health perspective, where we're always thinking about causes and trying to go upstream from the things that are causing the symptoms, for example, that somebody might be feeling.
[00:05:35] Um, thinking about, you know, what kind of world or system do you have to create where humans can actually have complete physical, mental, and social well being versus the kind of world that you create when you're really just focused on the absence of disease. Like, how can we create a world where nobody is sick or nobody dies early?
[00:05:52] That's a great world. And we haven't created that world yet either, but, but you create something different when your focus is, is on the [00:06:00] opportunity for all humans to have access to wellbeing.
[00:06:02] Pam Uzzell: I really
[00:06:03] love that. I think it is such a different approach to how we traditionally think about medicine in general and what is medicine and what's the purpose of medicine.
[00:06:14] So I, I love this. It's, it's from the 1940s, so it should not sound radical to my ears, but it did. So refreshing. We're going to talk about your Arts On Prescription Field Guide, but before that you did give your background as a singer- songwriter and I want to get more in depth into your story of what drew you to the field of arts and medicine.
[00:06:41] Tasha Golden: Oh, well, this is definitely not ever where I thought that I would wind up. The only, the only career I ever wanted since I was a little girl was to be a singer songwriter. I wanted to write songs and travel around singing them. And I'll share with you all that I, my, my father is a, was an evangelical, a fundamentalist evangelical [00:07:00] pastor.
[00:07:00] And in the church where I grew up, you know, women couldn't, certainly not children, but you couldn't preach or teach in mixed company audiences. But I learned very quickly, very early on when I was a very little girl that I could sing in front of anybody. And so when I had something that I felt like I wanted to say or share about life or my thoughts, I would write a song about it, and since I had an in with the congregation, because my dad was the pastor, I could get on stage and share that message with anybody.
[00:07:28] And it was this really early lesson for me in the idea that, that the arts can make things talk about able. And I mean that in so many different ways. There are things that we find that we can't share or disclose in kind of straightforward language, like what you and I are having right now on this podcast. But also, there are things that people won't hear
[00:07:48] outside of the arts or outside of certain kinds of creative approaches to sharing a message that instilled in me early on the importance of it's not just about having a message to share, but finding where and how we [00:08:00] can share that both like from that literal ability, like I mentioned, what can I share in certain circumstances versus others?
[00:08:05] And then from the How do I actually communicate it in a place or a way or a situation where I will be heard? And, and somebody will give me the time of day for that message. I don't share that faith anymore, but it definitely gave me that early grounding in this role of music and the human experience writ large.
[00:08:22] I majored in music composition in undergrad and went straight into a full time career touring as a singer songwriter for many years and thought that I would do that forever. But a couple things happened. The first is that I had songs that were about difficult experiences like my family's history of domestic violence or my own history of depression and anywhere that we went in the world those were the songs that people lined up wanting to talk with me about after shows and they would share their own really personal stories that were related to those songs and some of them would follow that up by saying they had never told anybody else before.
[00:08:57] I'm the first person they'd ever told about those [00:09:00] situations. And that happened so consistently everywhere that we went, that I was very early on kind of awash in the realization that I was playing, as a musician, a role that was beyond the apparent one for, for people and their ability to talk about something that was otherwise hidden in their lives, to disclose something that they felt they really needed to disclose, to process or navigate something that they weren't processing or navigating elsewhere.
[00:09:25] So I was like, what is it about a music venue or about a song or about me as a song, a singer that allowed people to share these stories? And then what did that mean for all the places in their lives where they can't do that? So if you're a they hadn't if I'm the first person they'd ever told that means they hadn't told a doctor or a therapist. That means that community organizations and resources that are supposed to be meeting the needs of folks who are survivors or who have mental illness weren't reaching these people and what could we do to like, you know, um, bridge the divide between what becomes possible in a music venue space and what is not yet [00:10:00] possible in a clinical space.
[00:10:02] What, what do we need to do to bridge that? This was a question that was fascinating to me really early on, and I didn't know where to pursue it or how or whether I would. I was just living with that question, right? And then late, late in my work, we, we made a record with a Grammy winning producer, like our most ambitious project, and I quickly ran myself into the ground with a severe bout of major depression and couldn't get out of bed, let alone play a show.
[00:10:28] And this became a kind of defining moment in my life where like the only thing I'd ever wanted to do, ever, was no longer something that I felt able to do and I still get very emotional talking about it because this is um, you know, the significant, um Impact of depression isn't just something that I study.
[00:10:49] It's something that you know transformed my life and kind of derailed it and I can be extremely happy about that on this side of it because it gave me this whole path of like [00:11:00] research and opportunity to connect with people. And I do trainings in mental health and trauma informed practice now, based not only on my research, but on my personal experience.
[00:11:08] But at the time, that was the most devastating thing that could have possibly happened. All of these things kind of came together in those moments when I was depressed and couldn't move or do anything. The things that were motivating to me were poetry. And still some songs, although I was iffy on, on those a little bit because of being in the hustle of the industry for so many years by that point.
[00:11:33] But then also this question that was still haunting me. What was it about music that was helpful to me, that was helpful to my audience members? And how do we bridge the divide between what's going on in our creative spheres and what's not yet going on in our clinical spheres. And I just kept pulling on that thread till I wound up with a PhD in public health sciences and doing the work that I'm doing now.
[00:11:57] Pam Uzzell: Wow. That is a [00:12:00] really powerful story. We've just met, I was not expecting that. And I am so inspired by it, quite honestly. It's not easy to come from that very dark place to where you are now, and especially a PhD, I'm, I'm just, I'm super impressed, quite honestly, and inspired by what you just
[00:12:29] told me.
[00:12:30] Tasha Golden: Thank you.
[00:12:31] I, I think, you know, something interesting about being a performer for a lot of years is that you get this sort of practice in what kinds of songs do people want to listen to or like you write a whole bunch of songs and then test them at a show and then oh that song I was really excited about nobody else liked but this other one I wasn't sure about they really wanted to hear that it's kind of a constant experiment a little scientific experiment every night sometimes but quickly learned that the things that were most difficult for me to talk about were usually the things that people wanted [00:13:00] and needed to hear about and it's become really important for me to like, okay, this is difficult. Obviously can't talk about it without crying a little bit, but it's also like oh I've learned I've learned that these are the things, as humans, we really we really need to be more transparent about and be able to create an opportunity for the conversation
[00:13:17] Pam Uzzell: Yeah, that
[00:13:18] is so true.
[00:13:19] That is so true. That is where people feel like, okay, I'm okay I, this is, this is a human experience and I'm okay because this other person is talking about that experience.
[00:13:34] Tasha Golden: Yeah.
[00:13:35] Pam Uzzell: That's really, that's an amazing story and it's amazing that that's what brought you to the work you're doing now because what you're doing now
[00:13:43] is so incredibly exciting and I do want to talk about now specifically this idea of the arts on prescription or arts as something [00:14:00] that's prescribed to someone. Can you give just an overview of an idea of what this is? Because there is an amazing field guide that you've written that I'm, I'm curious about a lot of things.
[00:14:14] First of all, what is it? Second of all, what has been the reaction of some of the medical community on seeing something like this? And then, after that, you can only answer these one at a time, I want to talk about some examples, real world examples. So first of all, what is this idea of arts on
[00:14:35] prescription?
[00:14:36] Tasha Golden: Yes, this is basically the idea that a clinician, whether it's a physician, or a nurse, or nurse practitioner, maybe a social worker, anybody who might be giving people referrals to the community. The idea of arts on prescription is that those referrals could also include, could and should, also include referrals to arts and culture and nature resources in the community.
[00:14:58] And this can sound a lot of [00:15:00] times novel on its face, like if you're just thinking about the phrase arts on prescription, which we did use purposefully, we kind of explain it in the field guide, but the idea that a doctor might write you a prescription for like a concert instead of writing it for medicine, for example, is a kind of, like, novel and sort of, like, provocative idea, and that's not actually what we're envisioning here, we're not trying to replace treatment, current treatments with art yet, there's some promise for that in certain spaces and for certain conditions, but really what we're saying is that even in the U.
[00:15:31] S., Our clinicians already do refer patients and clients to various community resources. We've just typically tended to narrow those in the U. S. to basic needs like, you know, things like housing assistance, job skills training, support groups, things like that. Whereas there are other countries where clinicians refer people to a really wider variety of things in the community.
[00:15:54] So the same kinds of things that we do for basic needs, but also things like volunteering opportunities. gardening [00:16:00] clubs, you know, sports and recreation opportunities, as well as arts opportunities, culture, you know, various kinds of nature things like passes to parks or zoos. And so it's kind of like in the US, we already have a little bit of an infrastructure set up for referring people to community resources.
[00:16:14] And our point in the guide is kind of like, there's no scientific reason to limit those referrals and resources to the things that we have limited them to now. There's plenty of benefit that clinicians can offer to clients and patients that could be gotten from arts experience, cultural experiences, nature experiences.
[00:16:33] And the only reason really that we haven't offered those is that there's not necessarily awareness of all the benefits that can be gained from those. And there's also just not been an infrastructure quite yet by which physicians, for example, could make those kinds of referrals. So unless you're a clinician who just happens to be like really aware of the benefits of something like a music class, and you just happen to,
[00:16:54] you know, mention to a parent, for example, Oh, you might want to enroll your child in a music class for XYZ benefits. [00:17:00] You might be able to personally make that recommendation, but you wouldn't have any structure by which you could make that recommendation and then the music class could potentially be covered for free for that patient or by insurance or something like that.
[00:17:11] So that's really been the gap that we're trying to address with this field guide is like, okay, We know that there's this opportunity. We know that we kind of already have a structure and practice in place. We want to enhance and expand that by making more community resources available to people. And then here is exactly how you can do that based on some early models that we've been working on here in the U.
[00:17:30] S.
[00:17:31] Pam Uzzell: Wow, I love that
[00:17:31] idea that your insurance could potentially pay for some of these prescriptions. That was a question I had is that I know that accessibility, equity, inclusion is really central to this, but there might be some things that are prescribed to people that are beyond their means.
[00:17:50] Tasha Golden: Right.
[00:17:51] Pam Uzzell: And what I like is that you don't not address that in this field guide.
[00:17:58] It almost feels like a [00:18:00] central component around accessibility, equity, inclusion, and that this be community centered.
[00:18:07] Tasha Golden: Yes.
[00:18:08] Pam Uzzell: that it's not just looking at this from the outside. Can you talk about that a little bit, like coming to this idea that this is how this could and should
[00:18:17] work?
[00:18:17] Tasha Golden: Yes. Oh my goodness. I am so glad that that shone through because that was definitely our kind of north star for this work and for a variety of reasons, but obviously, the things that humans need to be well are not equitably available to everyone.
[00:18:32] And so if you're going to say that health is not only the absence of disease, which also right now is not equitably available, but if you're going to say that it's not only the absence of disease, but it's the presence, I would say like, that's like the opposite of absence. So the presence of complete wellbeing, then it's on us.
[00:18:46] It's on all of us to try to make sure that that presence of well being is also equitably available. And what Arts on Prescription has the opportunity to do is not only enhance health equity by making sure that more people have access to some of these resources and [00:19:00] experiences that tend to benefit our lives, give us a greater sense of subjective well being, a greater sense of quality of life, a greater opportunity to connect with other people and experience things that are meaningful or transformative to us.
[00:19:10] All of those things should be equitably available. available and can be health resources that more people should have access to. But also in the realm of arts and culture and nature, we know that those institutions have not been equitable historically either. So the opportunity that exists for the arts and prescription work right now is by bringing these two things together to enhance the equity and the inclusion and the community centered focus of
[00:19:34] all of these different sectors and disciplines where we can have a greater focus on who has access to these things, whose lives are being benefited, who's, who's not being included right now. And there's so many great questions to answer for any arts organization or cultural organization, nature organization, and of course, any healthcare or social care organization.
[00:19:54] There's so many great questions that are in the field guide, but just to ask in general around. you know, who's [00:20:00] going to actually be able to participate? How included are they going to be feeling? How represented are they in the art or the genres or the, you know, curated exhibits that are being displayed here?
[00:20:10] Like whatever it is that's going on, who is this reflecting and who's going to feel comfortable and welcomed here? And those are such important questions to ask across the board. And then just in a broader zoomed out way. We know that that work that's grounded in the community, that's community based and like has a kind of grassroots, ground up initiative, that kind of thing is going to be more successful in the long run.
[00:20:33] So rather than having people with relative power in a community being like, Well, I don't know, I'm a hospital administrator and I really like museums. So let's create a program where, you know, with patients at my hospital can go to this museum that I really love. I mean, sure, that could be a nice start.
[00:20:49] Maybe that's better than nothing. But you're ultimately not going to be incredibly inclusive and equitable. Not all of your patients are going to want to go to the museum that you like as a hospital administrator. And [00:21:00] then basing the resources that people have access to just on what somebody with power happened to really like or be interested in.
[00:21:06] that's not going to be sustainable over time. There's not going to be as much buy in. So when you base your work on, you know, we also call it the end user, like who's actually the person most affected by this, by this program or initiative, you're going to get a far more successful and sustainable program.
[00:21:21] In addition to the fact that it's going to be more equitable and inclusive and representative because it's grounded in their, their actual participation.
[00:21:30] Pam Uzzell: Right. And here's another. bit of language that I really liked. You talked about when you were going into any community to try and implement some sort of partnership between the medical community and that community.
[00:21:45] You talked about, first of all, having whoever is going to be consulting on this, that it be people from this community, but you also talked about approaching that community with an assets based mindset. As opposed [00:22:00] to a deficit based
[00:22:02] mindset.
[00:22:02] Tasha Golden: It's so true. I mean, if you think about it, it can get really exciting to think about, not only do you want more residents to be able to have access to the amazing things that are happening in the community, whether it's a large institution or something that's around the corner that's, you know, a completely trusted, incredibly talented person who's teaching dance in a very small studio or even in their home, you know, who knows, whatever it is that might be a community
[00:22:26] base that people love. You want more people to be able to have access to that. And you want those kinds of opportunities to be supported themselves, like somebody who is, in that same example, somebody who is teaching in a small dance studio. How can we sustain that small dance studio? How can we sustain the young artist who's creating albums and playing some shows in their really local area?
[00:22:47] And so, so it's kind of like you can do both of these things together. We recommend what we call assets mapping. It's a common practice in public health and community health, but looking around at what are the various assets and resources in this community? What are [00:23:00] the things that people in this community love and trust and love to do?
[00:23:03] What is it that they're already supporting? What is it that they're already participating in and how can we engage those practices in a program like Arts on Prescription so that not only are we engaging programs and practices that the community loves and trusts and wants to be engaged with, but also helping create maybe some more sustainable pathways for those artists and those creatives in that community.
[00:23:26] Pam Uzzell: Yeah, yeah. It's just, again, it's all very, very refreshing language. And I believe you when you say that was your North Star because it does read that way. I'm wondering if you can talk about some places, some of the programs where this has already been implemented.
[00:23:47] Tasha Golden: Yeah.
[00:23:47] Pam Uzzell: Um, some of them that were, I don't know if they were models for you or I would love to hear places where this is already a part of, of the idea of medical
[00:23:58] services.
[00:23:59] Tasha Golden: [00:24:00] Yes, there are, there are increasing numbers of them. So fascinating just in the last couple years, but I, I should say that the Arts on Prescription Field Guide, which anybody listening can get for free, it's a completely free resource and maybe the easiest way to tell you to get it is at tashagolden.com/fieldguide.
[00:24:15] It's the one that I remember, , I don't remember all the URLs. I can remember that one. You can get it there. It's free. And it was developed in partnership with Mass Cultural Council, which is the state of Massachusetts Arts Council and the University of Florida Center for Arts and Medicine. And it grew out of Mass Cultural Council in 2020 launched the first kind of statewide arts and prescription program in the U.
[00:24:35] S. and they called it Culture Rx Social Prescription. And they brought me in a couple years ago to evaluate that program, a pilot evaluation of that program. And we learned so much because the cool thing about CultureRx in Massachusetts is that even though it's described as a single program, it was actually created by various cultural organizations across the state applying for a grant to put this kind of thing [00:25:00] in practice in their community.
[00:25:01] So what you wound up having was like 12 different cultural organizations reaching out to like 12 different healthcare or social care providers, creating these little partnerships, these little dyads across the state. And so you don't just, when looking at CultureRx, you don't just get an idea of how this general idea of arts and prescription works in a state.
[00:25:20] What you get is like, you know, 10 to 15 different looks at models, all of them set up in different ways, all of them overcoming challenges in their own different ways. They're in rural places, they're in urban places, they're, um, they're face, they're coming up with different kinds of systems to make referrals and to follow through.
[00:25:38] And so you, you can just learn so much by all of those, um, small models being instituted together in a single state. So once we published the evaluation of CultureRx, which you can also get for free from Mass Cultural Council. And we had a peer reviewed article about it, but there was so much rich knowledge from all of these organizations churning over this work for a [00:26:00] few years that Mass Cultural Council was like, we want to create a kind of how to guide at this point.
[00:26:05] We have the findings, but we don't want that how to guide to just be for Massachusetts. Like, what do Like that would be such a, a loss, you know, like why not create this so that communities all across the US can kind of stand on the shoulders of what we've learned and you don't have to start from scratch, you know, you're going to have to start a lot of things from scratch in your community anyway, because everything that you build is going to be based on the culture and the community and the resources that exist where you are.
[00:26:31] But you don't have to start everything from scratch because we can tell you so much of what we've learned, our barriers, our opportunities, our systems, all of that. We worked together to begin the field guide to share that knowledge and then brought in the University of Florida Center for Arts and Medicine because they have been doing ongoing research in their epi arts lab
[00:26:48] on social prescribing in the U. S., another term for this idea of clinicians being able to prescribe things in the community. They had lots of early findings from other arts and prescription pilots in the country that we were able to draw [00:27:00] from. So in CultureRx, there's lots of really cool examples of, for example, pediatricians being able to refer clients to museum visits or to theater shows or to, uh, park passes.
[00:27:12] And we heard from, you know, from, I remember talking to a pediatrician that was using this, they gave an example of a parent who wasn't communicating with their teenager very much. The teenager was always on a screen, didn't really want to talk. And typically, you know, the physician would typically just give them some light advice about maybe some things that they could try.
[00:27:31] But on this occasion, they were able to say, Well, let me give you tickets to a museum or a theater or a park, and you all can go and have this kind of novel experience together and hopefully talk about it while you're there or debrief about it afterwards. give you something to do without the screens, something to talk about that was new.
[00:27:48] And the pediatricians were just like, this is such an intuitive way to use something that's in the community to help support parental relationships with their teenagers, to help create these kinds of connections that we need in our [00:28:00] families, that they just didn't have in their tool set before. So that was really interesting.
[00:28:04] And there's lots of different programs. Happy to share more examples like programs specifically for veterans or a program in New Jersey that's a partnership between Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center where they can prescribe arts activities to people who are, as they describe, at higher risk of maybe overusing, in their terms, their insurance.
[00:28:27] And so you can kind of see how it could be a net positive even for an insurance company that's really focused on the bottom line. Um, that it could be helpful for people to have access to these resources that take care of their health.
[00:28:39] Pam Uzzell: Well,
[00:28:40] I am interested in the veteran, if just like briefly you can talk about that program for veterans.
[00:28:45] Tasha Golden: Yeah,
[00:28:45] there was a program in Northern Florida, I think also included Southern Georgia, that was designed to help connect veterans. There was already a program for veterans where they could work with creative arts therapists. But once [00:29:00] their series of sessions with those creative arts therapists ended, the, the desire, the desire with this program was to create a kind of bridge where they could continue that arts participation in their community.
[00:29:10] It wouldn't be with a licensed therapist in that art form, but it could be a way to kind of maintain their health by continuing to have that kind of participation, maintain some social connection, especially for veterans in these rural areas in Northern Florida and Southern Georgia. So they had some grant money that they used to fund
[00:29:29] some community arts programs and had a what they called a kind of link worker. So the the original therapist would contact that link worker say I have this patient who wants to continue this work and that link worker would find an appropriate community arts organization for them to continue and that program lasted I think about a year and just had really positive feedback from the veterans that the only drawbacks were that sometimes, if I'm remembering correctly, I think that sometimes the veterans wanted more access or more [00:30:00] opportunities to continue it in a way that maybe wasn't feasible or they lacked some access.
[00:30:05] When it came to some issues like transportation or some things like that, which are often roadblocks. So these are things that we're learning about as we go. What are all of the different wraparound needs that we might need to put in place to make sure that these opportunities are truly accessible, as accessible as possible.
[00:30:23] Pam Uzzell: Yeah, and I appreciated that too. There is a whole section where you're identifying what are the typical roadblocks and transportation was one, cost I think was another one. I can't remember all of them now, but again, you know, perfect is the enemy of good so the fact that you are starting to develop this while also evaluating
[00:30:48] well, what are the things that we still need to work on? I thought that was really a very positive aspect of the field guide as well. So when you [00:31:00] envision the best possible outcome in terms of this being adopted, what is your vision? What changes are you seeing in the U. S.? Let's just start there. Let's just not go to the world, but in the U.
[00:31:14] S., what are you seeing?
[00:31:15] Tasha Golden: Well, the U. S. as, as we know, is a, is a funny case because of our for profit health system, and there's not a kind of national, a national approach to this work that kind of has to be put together on a location by location basis, and that makes it more difficult. What I want to see is for there to not be a barrier between what we think of as health in a clinical sense and what we recognize as being beneficial to human beings in a more community based sense.
[00:31:46] I would hope that this kind of program opens us up to think more about how we, not only how we address, like we said at the beginning, not only how you address disease and infirmity and react to things when they go wrong, but how do you actually build a community where [00:32:00] more and more people can thrive.
[00:32:01] And to some extent, You know, this is just a piece of that puzzle that we would be so aware of the different components of what makes a thriving human life that we would, it would just be obvious to us like, well, of course, if somebody comes into my doctor's office and I have an opportunity to connect them with these things that I know can be good for their health, I'm going to do that.
[00:32:19] The fact that that's at a theater or at a music venue and not in another clinic shouldn't be, there's no scientific reason why that would be any kind of like barrier, right? Like if it's health benefiting, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna refer out to it. And I'm also anxious to see this expand out. Like what other types of resources are we not making sure that people have access to beyond arts and culture and nature?
[00:32:42] This is of course where my wheelhouse is as a researcher and a scientist, but this isn't the end of what we can be thinking of. And sometimes I'll share this as a quick kind of example with my students sometimes. I'll tell them like, When somebody's thinking about adopting a pet, and if they go to the pound, and [00:33:00] they see, for example, a husky, and they're like, Okay, I live in a tiny studio apartment, and I have no time to ever walk a dog.
[00:33:08] If they bring that husky home, most of us can recognize that's probably not a great fit. That, that dog is going to be miserable in a couple weeks, and it won't be because the dog needs medicine. It won't be because the dog needs some kind of specialist. It's because that dog is not in an environment
[00:33:23] that is designed for it, like that's conducive to its ability to thrive. And what I talk about with my students is that sometimes we're more able to think about that for pets and animals than we are for human beings. You know, if you wanted to zoom out and think what kind of environment does a human being need in order to thrive and to what extent are we kind of medicating or pathologizing, you know, responses to being in an environment that's not conducive to our thriving?
[00:33:49] These are kind of public health questions that you sort of get at a root cause or a structural solution to problems, but I would really love to see humans become more and more able to think [00:34:00] about their health in that broad contextual way because then we can really start to move the needle on the things that give us all access to those
[00:34:06] environments and it's not universal. We are all pretty different from each other and we need different kinds of things, but there are some universals. You know, I think being able to shift health in a big way is going to require us to move from trying to just react when things go wrong to actively and proactively creating environments where things go right for humans.
[00:34:25] Pam Uzzell: Hmm.
[00:34:27] Well, I love that vision and I am so excited about the work that you're doing. So one more time, Tasha, can you tell people where they can find this Arts On Prescription Field Guide?
[00:34:40] Tasha Golden: Yes, please go download it. Our hope is that more and more people have access to it. So you can get it at tashagolden.com/fieldguide.
[00:34:48] And if you'd like to Google it, I'm sure that you can also find it at the University of Florida Center for Arts and Medicine website there.
[00:34:54] Pam Uzzell: Well, that's wonderful. Thank you so much for being on the podcast and talking [00:35:00] about this. It's work that I'm really
[00:35:01] excited about.
[00:35:02] Tasha Golden: Oh, thank you so much for having me, Pam.
[00:35:04] This has just been a delight to talk to you. Thank you.
[00:35:09] Pam Uzzell: You're listening to Art Heals All Wounds.
[00:35:36] This was such a great talk with Tasha Golden. I'm really excited about the work that she's doing to create a world in which the arts become a part of healthcare, and that healthcare, in turn, aims to increase our well being. I'll leave a link to her website in the show notes, and you can learn more about her, and also get your own copy of Arts on Prescription.
[00:35:59] I'll [00:36:00] also leave a link to Tasha's music as part of the duo Ellery. I don't think she'll mind, and I think that you'll enjoy it. Please share your story of belonging with me in a voicemail. All you have to do is go to my website, arthealsallwoundspodcast.com and click on the voicemail link. I'll share your story on a future episode. While you're at my website
[00:36:26] if you'd like to support the making of this podcast, you can click on the "Buy Me a Coffee" link and leave a little something. Every little bit helps. As always, thanks for listening.
[00:36:48] The music you've heard in this podcast is by Ketsa and Lobo Loco. As always, this show was recorded using Squadcast FM. Art [00:37:00] Heals All Wounds comes to you from Oakland, California, on unceded territory of the Chochenyo Ohlone people.