Opinion Piece by Grant Oliphant, Prebys Foundation President & CEO, published in San Diego Union-Tribune | Tuesday, August, 25, 2026
Teenagers learn to surf and receive academic tutoring through the free “Un Mar de Colores” youth surf program in Oceanside. (Pamela Hogan)
For generations, we’ve understood health widely through the lens of medicine. When people struggle physically or emotionally, our first instinct is to ask what treatment they need, or what diagnosis can explain their suffering. But another question worth answering is: What makes people well in the first place?
At a time when anxiety, polarization and isolation have become defining challenges across America, the question deserves more attention than it receives. As technology advances and social media saturates our daily lives, we’ve built a society that increasingly disconnects us from what makes us human. Our mental health is a consequence of that disconnection.
When the Prebys Foundation began supporting mental and behavioral health initiatives, we realized that there simply aren’t enough clinicians in the world to meet the need. However, there are extraordinary community assets that can support our health system.
Across the country, communities are beginning to rediscover something many cultures have long understood: healing doesn’t just happen inside clinical settings. It happens in relationships with other people, with creativity, and the natural world.
Modern research is validating this ancient wisdom. The growing movement of social prescribing connects people to non-clinical, community-based activities like arts, movement or time spent outdoors to improve their well-being. Many health systems have started to adopt social prescribing not only as a complement to medical treatment, but as a preventative approach to reduce the need for more intensive care.
Although San Diego did not invent social prescribing, we are in a unique position to advance the movement. Our region has spent decades establishing and protecting remarkable cultural and natural assets because they enrich our quality of life.
The opportunity lies in recognizing them as part of our health infrastructure rather than ameni-ties. As loneliness, isolation, and a lack of belonging are themselves a health risk, we’re exploring how these assets can help our ability to heal.
That realization led to the Prebys Foundation’s Healing Through Arts and Nature initiative that connects the community with experiences in arts, culture, and nature.
In partnership with nonprofits, arts and cultural institutions, and healthcare providers, we’re changing how we think about healing and strengthening evidence of the benefits. The goal is not to elevate any one organization or program, but to strengthen an ecosystem in which healing is understood as a shared responsibility and opportunity.
The stories emerging from this work are already illustrating how creative engagement impacts both mental and physical health.
Youth participating in programs like “Un Mar de Colores” are building confidence and relationships through education, mentorship, and the outdoors. Families speak not only about how their children are more engaged in school, but happier and more hopeful about their future.
At another end, we have the older adult population, who are more often than not aging alone or away from the outdoors.
Older adults with Parkinson’s disease and their caregivers are finding renewed mobility, joy and connection through dance programs like San Diego Neuro-Dance at Malashock. While medicine remains essential, so does relationship building.
If experience has taught us anything, it is that mental health cannot be solved exclusively inside exam rooms. Communities themselves can become places of healing.
As research continues to measure outcomes, we can already see the field of arts and health is growing momentum across the nation. In New York, the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund has spent years advanc-ing the arts as a powerful tool for healing.
This year it partnered with the Jameel Arts and Health Lab to launch the Healing Arts New York Network to increase collaboration among healthcare providers and arts organizations.
San Diego’s work reflects that same momentum while building on strengths that are uniquely our own. We’ve seen the strength of our arts community and how they aren’t optional but indispensable. We’ve seen arts organizations, community, and philanthropy work together to create something greater than the sum of our individual efforts.
In many ways, we have engaged in a profound cultural struggle over our own humanity. We are facing an important choice about the kind of society we want to build. We can continue drifting toward greater isolation, or we can intentionally reconnect with one another and with the experiences that make us fully human.
Oliphant is the president and CEO of the Prebys Foundation and lives in Carlsbad.
