About Us
Arts in Health is a multidisciplinary field of practice, education, and research at the intersection of arts and health. Anecdotally, we’ve all experienced the benefits of engaging with the arts—a song that brings us joy or calm, a poem or story that helps us make meaning, a performance that brings together a community. There is a developing body of evidence that shows that, like exercise and good nutrition, the arts are beneficial for our physical and mental health. In fact, arts participation is now understood to be a health behavior and a social determinant of health.
Building on a growing field of Arts in Health across the country and around the world, Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers School of Public Health, and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center have joined in an interdisciplinary partnership to launch the Arts in Health Research Lab. This unique partnership between a major public research university and a celebrated performing arts center is the first of its kind in the nation.
The goals of the Arts in Health Research Lab are to perform Arts in Health research that benefits populations across the state of New Jersey, innovate new research strategies including arts-based research methods and art-as-data collection, and establish a research plan to assess the health impact of NJPAC and Mason Gross arts experiences and programs.