Hospital in Romania’s Cluj pilots ‘culture on prescription’ project

Doctors at the Ambulatory Care Unit of the Cluj-Napoca Infectious Diseases Hospital will be able to prescribe culture as a complement to medical care as part of a pilot project launched on January 20.

The project, titled Cultural Prescription for Health and Wellbeing, will run for six months to improve the “wellbeing of patients, reduce cases of isolation and those of repeated, non-urgent consults, and consolidate community cohesion.”

The beneficiaries will be those seeking care at the Ambulatory Care Unit, whether children, adults, or the elderly, the Cluj County Council said in a release. Following medical evaluation, the doctor will decide the type of intervention the patient needs and if a cultural prescription is needed.

The first partners in the project are the National Museum of History of Transylvania and the Romanian Opera of Cluj-Napoca. Based on partnerships with the two institutions, some 300 patients can benefit from free admission to several museum visits and guided tours, and tickets to opera and ballet performances.

The project was started in the context of “increasingly fragile mental health locally, a higher number of chronic patients, community services poorly connected to family doctors, and of increased demand for primary care,” according to the initiators of the project, which is coordinated by Sebastian Armean, the chief physician of the Ambulatory Care Unit.

The project builds on the idea that health depends not only on medical treatment, but also on social and emotional factors and a sense of belonging to a community. As such, doctors can prescribe not only medication, but also social activities or community resources. As an extension of this approach, the cultural prescription will recommend cultural activities as a "means of promoting physical and mental health, through participation in concerts, theatre performances, art exhibitions, painting, music or dance workshops, as well as encouraging reading, creative writing, museum visits, and the exploration of local cultural traditions and heritage.”

(Photo: Aliaksandra Balbatunova | Dreamstime.com)