For many students who gathered inside Ginsburg Hall on Monday for the “Arts + Health: A USC Arts Now Symposium,” the HBO Max drama “The Pitt” was the hook. But by the end of the conference, the conversation had moved beyond the show’s star, Noah Wyle, and into innovations in healthcare and healing.
“Arts and health are everything,” said Marientina Gotsis, professor of practice at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and founding director of the USC Creative Media and Behavioral Health Center. “They’re an intersection for innovation, for solutions, for compassion, for joy. The reason why I get up every day and go to work.”
The symposium brought together artists, medical students, scientists, and performers to examine how creative expression shapes public health from dance and brain plasticity to storytelling in emergency rooms.
For Sydney Jones, a freshman neuroscience major, the event felt like a bridge between two disciplines inherently connected. “As a neuroscience major, obviously, health is really important to me,” Jones said. “There was a sequence on dance and neuroscience that really sparked my interest because I used to do Irish dance. It felt like a perfect combination of my interests.”
The intersection of art and biology was a recurring theme throughout the morning. Research presented at the symposium explored how dance strengthens neural pathways, how music impacts the aging brain, and how interpreting art can mirror diagnostic processes in medicine.
For some students, the connection between art and health feels deeply personal.
Diamante Crescitelli Cameron, a sophomore dramatic arts major who plans to pursue nursing, described art as essential to navigating life. “I am disabled,” Crescitelli Cameron said. “I feel like art is really the way that, especially disabled people, can find solace. Stories are where you can become anything that you want to be.”
Living with chronic pain, Crescitelli Cameron described art as “not just expression, it is salvation.” “You can’t solve problems within the body without solving a little bit of the soul,” she said. “They’re so deeply intertwined”.
The idea that storytelling can influence health outcomes was also central to the discussion, with fireside chats featuring “The Pitt” lead actor and executive producer Noah Wyle, showrunner and creator R. Scott Gemmill, executive producer Simran Baidwan, and medical consultant Dr. Elizabeth Ferreira. Even though it is fictional, the series has sparked conversations about the realities of medicine today, with overcrowded emergency rooms, medical worker burnout, and systemic shortages. Noah Whyle described the show as “an empathy generator”.
“What we wanted to do was put up something that was extremely representative of what you would find in a big-city emergency room,” he said. “All of the ills that are facing society end up in those emergency rooms.”
Rather than simply dramatizing a crisis, the show occasionally brings in solutions based on expert consultation. But its larger aim is even more powerful. “People on the front lines are feeling very seen and heard,” he said. “Their families are getting context for what they do for a living.”
He describes moments when healthcare workers’ children or partners watch the show and ask, “Is that really what you do?” “Having the ability just to nod”, he said, “I think has had a real tangible effect.”
For Anna Bacchi, a freshman dramatic arts major with a family history of dementia, the symposium reinforced something she already hoped was true: that participation in the arts might help protect the brain. “I hope that my participation in the arts, and specifically because I am a dancer as well, will help with my brain capacity and future memory,” Bacchi said.
The symposium is part of an initiative to connect creative practice with research and public impact, bringing together students, faculty, and industry leaders to explore how the arts can shape the future of health care.