Integrated arts engagement as preventive infrastructure for active and healthy aging: a conceptual and policy framework

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Abstract
Population aging is changing the work of public health. Longer lives require not only medical treatment, but also support for functional ability, social connection, meaning, participation, and everyday wellbeing. Arts engagement is increasingly discussed in relation to health, yet arts activities often remain treated as cultural or recreational provision rather than as part of preventive public health systems. This conceptual article develops the idea of integrated community arts engagement as a framework for understanding how arts participation can contribute to healthy aging. The framework draws on literature in arts and health, healthy aging, social prescribing, community participation, and health equity. Integrated community arts engagement proposed here refers to community-based arts activities that are meaningful to older adults, accessible in everyday settings, connected to health and social care pathways, supported by local partnerships, and evaluated as part of healthy aging systems. The framework proposes six hypothesized mechanisms and five policy pathways for system integration. Reframing arts engagement as preventive infrastructure does not medicalize the arts. Rather, it recognizes that health in later life is shaped in ordinary social and cultural settings. These pathways are conceptual propositions rather than empirical findings of this article. Integrated community arts engagement may help aging societies build more humane, locally grounded, and culturally responsive approaches to prevention and healthy aging.

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