As German partner organisations, ISIS Institut für Soziale Infrastruktur and the Health Department Frankfurt am Main are working together on the Culture on Prescription project. Based on various interviews with experts from the fields of psychology, medicine, politics, adult education and pedagogy and a desk research, exciting insights into the potential of the Culture on Prescription approach could already be gathered.
During the research phase it became clear that in Germany there are already a few offers available that combine social activities and health prevention. However, these offers are not yet linked to prescriptions by medical professionals and still require that potential participants register themselves in order to be able to participate. In addition, almost no preventive offer that focus on cultural activities could be identified.
Our interviewees see potential that prescribing cultural activities reduce the individual feeling of loneliness, especially since current pandemic situation and trends (demographic change, digitalisation) contribute to enhance the prevalence of isolation and loneliness. On the other hand, the experts stated that the structures present in the health sector in Germany, such as the large number of locally operating health insurance companies, will make large-scale implementation difficult.
The interviewees are very open to local testing of the concept, as planned within the Culture on Prescription project. National reports providing more detailed research results from the participating countries can be downloaded from the section ‘Materials’ in autumn