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How can Creative Health and Social Prescribing support health equity?
3 June 2021
Prof Helen Chatterjee’s recent UCL East Lunch Hour Lecture discusses combining public health with arts, nature, and creativity.
The Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdowns highlighted the value of ‘community assets’ such as museums, parks, and libraries to many of us – for both mental and physical health.
Helen Chatterjee, Professor of Biology at UCL Biosciences and UCL Arts & Sciences, delivered a recent UCL East Lunch Hour Lecture on this, reflecting on the role creative health and social prescribing have in reducing health inequalities.
Esme Elsden, UCL IEHC Soc-B Doctoral Candidate, reviewed Prof Chatterjee’s lecture on the UCL Faculty of Arts & Humanities Blog, describing creative health as an inspiring research area which combines the arts and sciences for better health outcomes. Esme also agreed that connecting to nature, for example going for a walk amongst trees, has therapeutic effects.
Prof Chatterjee’s talk emphasised the value in developing creative health partnerships, which combine public health with the arts, nature, and creativity. Such partnerships, she argues, can help to produce more equal health outcomes for all in society by offering personalised care and valuing the patient experience in public health.
UCL’s new Master’s of Arts and Sciences (MASc) in Creative Health, which is launching in September 2021 and will move to be taught at UCL East from 2022, seeks to capture this ethos and create a new generation of socially engaged scholars and practitioners.
Watch Prof Chatterjee's talk here: