We are literally half way through the challenges with Challenge Detroit, who knew that time would fly like this.  This third challenge is very dear to me, because as a healthcare worker, I am excited to partner with Beaumont Family Medicine and the integration of art and healing.  I was honored to meet Monte Nagler, the artist who is responsible for the 84-foot mural in the basement of Henry Ford Hospital, the very same mural I enjoy observing while taking a moment away for the seriousness of the lab.  The mural is of nature and waterfall, and there are sounds of the fall and birds chirping that helps you to escape into the picture itself.   In those moments I can attest to the benefits of a healing art program.  The pictures above are a few of my favorite pictures that are apart of the Healing Art program at Henry Ford Hospital.  This program is the integration of any art form to a wide variety of healthcare and community settings for therapeutic, educational, and expressive purposes and has been proven to benefit patients, their families, and their caregivers.  Research confirms that the arts enhance coping, thereby reducing patients’ need for hospital care, pain medication, and unnecessary extra costs. In addition, the arts reduce patients’ level of depression and situational anxiety, contribute to patient satisfaction, and improve the medical providers’ recruitment and retention rates.  This project is tackling a new area, how might art therapy promote health and wellness in a community.  Visiting Detroit Central City, I am becoming a believer that art can be a great medium to encourage and motivation the masses.  We see every day, how people from all walks of life and every corner of the planet are expressing themselves through the arts—musical, performance, visual, writing, culinary—and discovering how it reduces the physical and emotional burden associated with various types of health conditions and life circumstances.  I had the opportunity to dine at On The Rise Bakery Café, along with my challenge team, and I was truly inspired.  This Cafe is a program of the Capuchin Soup Kitchen.  These bakers have recently been released from prison and have completed a substance abuse treatment program and received their culinary arts certificate.  I’m convinced that they took advantage of the art’s creative power to help transform and redirect their lives for the better.  This leads me to ponder the idea of integrating art into the crisis of our prison system, a systems that causes more damage than correction.  And then when these offenders return to society they are unable to function as law abiding citizens, and unfortunately return back to the same system.  Can art make an impact against the harsh realities of the prison community?