People who run arts programming get told, gently, that the work is nice but soft — good for the soul, not the body. In 2019 the World Health Organization published the largest review to date that says otherwise.
Daisy Fancourt and Saoirse Finn, writing for the WHO Regional Office for Europe, ran a scoping review of the global evidence on arts and health. They pulled in over 900 publications, including roughly 200 reviews that themselves covered more than 3,000 studies, spanning research from 2000 to 2019. It is the most comprehensive map of this field anyone has assembled.
Their finding was not a modest maybe. The arts play a role across the whole span of health: preventing illness before it starts, promoting wellbeing day to day, and helping manage and treat conditions once they appear. Music, dance, visual art, drama, and reading show up in outcomes from birth to end of life.
A few concrete examples from the review: group singing supports lung function and lowers anxiety; arts activities in schools track with better wellbeing; museum and music programs help people living with dementia; and creative engagement aids recovery in mental-health treatment.
The caveat the authors are careful about: a scoping review maps evidence, it does not rank every study by quality, and the field still needs more rigorous trials. This is a strong signal, not a closed case.
Still, when the WHO puts its name on a document saying the arts belong in health policy, that is a lever. If you run a program, this is the citation to hand a hospital, a funder, or a city that thinks culture is a luxury.
Sources
Fancourt, D., & Finn, S. (2019). What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being? A scoping review. WHO Regional Office for Europe, Health Evidence Network Synthesis Report 67.