Tuesday, July 29, 2025, 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
PLENARY: From Aesthetics to Action: Leveraging the Arts in Public Health Communication

Overview
The arts can transform health communication by leveraging aesthetic experiences, creative media, and community engagement. Rooted in evidence and ethics, the session will address how arts participation functions as a health behavior and social determinant of health. With a dynamic opening performance and expert panel discussion, the session will challenge attendees to expand their understanding of communication to include shared aesthetic experiences, arts-based methods, entertainment education, and historically powerful uses of the arts in activism and public health.

Key Focus Areas

  • The science and impact of arts participation as a health behavior
  • Examples of arts-based health communications
  • Aesthetic experience and shared meaning in public health messaging
  • The history of the arts in both harm and healing
  • Arts prescribing in the U.S. 
  • Data from the Arts for EveryBody initiative
  • Entertainment education
  • Ethics of collaboration with artists and communities
Jill Sonke, PhD Dyllón Burnside Alana Jackson Natalie Rella