It’s a moment many have experienced: you’re in the passenger seat of a loved one’s car, when suddenly, the driver slams on the brakes, jolting your ride to an abrupt stop just inches short of an unexpected road hazard. As you catch your breath, you glance down to see the driver’s arm stretched across your chest—a habit of muscle memory for those who grew up during a time when clicking on a seatbelt when they got in the car was not second nature.
While buckling up when getting into a car may be instinctive today, this was not always the case. As recently as the early 1980s, only 11%-14% of motorists nationwide reported wearing seatbelts. To address these alarming statistics, government agencies launched an extensive education campaign highlighting the lifesaving value of seatbelts. As a result, seatbelt usage skyrocketed to 42% in 1987 and continued a steady upward trend year over year as lawmakers in 49 states passed legislation requiring motorists to “Click it or Ticket” and stands at nearly 92%.
Similarly, Margery “Margie” Pabst Steinmetz believes that the field of arts in health is poised for its own “seatbelt moment” in the United States—a moment where the public fully embraces the arts as a means to improve health and transform lives.
Margie has helped forge the future of the field at the University of Florida and beyond. From codifying its language to disseminating practical resources to funding critical large-scale studies, her philanthropy has helped propel the UF Center for Arts in Medicine (CAM) to its status as a world leader in the field of arts in health.
“There are a lot of paradigm changes within this work,” the Central Florida philanthropist said, “but the ultimate one is the one where people's behavior changes and they don't even have to think about it—they just do it. Most of us know that when we eat fruits and vegetables, there's that moment when our bodies feel better—and so, we get to a point where we just do it. It’s the same with physical exercise; same with wearing a seatbelt; same with the arts.”
Margie and her husband, Charles “Chuck” Steinmetz, founded the Pabst Steinmetz Foundation with the mission to ensure that every Floridian has access to the arts. As a longstanding strategic partner of the Center for Arts in Medicine, the Pabst Steinmetz Foundation is committed to the next chapter of their shared mission: expanding “arts for all” across the nation.
The Pabst Steinmetz Foundation infuses critical funding support into research being conducted by the center to evaluate the value of arts in health, and to use that data to define best practices for healthcare and public health workers, patients, caregivers, policymakers and communities throughout the United States.
However, according to Jill Sonke, PhD, Director of Research Initiatives at the center, Margery Pabst Steinmetz is not the type of person to merely sit back and funnel funds into research.
Instead, Margie takes a driver’s seat approach to philanthropy: she works alongside researchers, artists, and community advocates to steer the national conversation and propel the field of arts in health toward its “seatbelt moment.”
“When I think of what it's like to work with Margie,” Sonke said, “I think of how, when we're having conversations, she’ll physically lean in. And she’ll just light up. She’s so with us in terms of passion, determination and grit—and that's really special. I think that having that kind of relationship with an investment partner is where we can really make change.”
The journey from caregiver to field-builder
Margery Pabst Steinmetz first arrived to the field of arts in health in the early 2000s through her experiences as an end-of-life caregiver to her parents and her first husband, Mark Pabst.
“I'm a piano player, I am a writer, and a storyteller of sorts,” Margie noted in a 2021 interview for UF College of the Arts In the Loop news. “And so intuitively I used a lot of the arts when I was caregiving for my loved ones.”
“My first conversation with Margie was about the need to take care of our caretakers, both the people who work inside the healthcare system and the loved ones who do the lion's share of the work,” said Jamie Bennett, former Executive Director of ArtPlace America. “Since then, Margie has continually expanded my understanding of health and the roles that arts and culture play in supporting it at the patient level, within institutions, and for entire populations.”
Following the passing of her parents and late husband, Mark, in the early 2000s, Margie authored two books, Enrich Your Caregiving Journey and Words of Care. She also moderated an online caregiver support group,where she hosted a monthly radio segment called “Caregiver and Physician Conversations." Here, she discovered a disconnect in how medical doctors frame arts in health practices.
“I’ve always felt that the arts and humanities occupy not a central spot, but sort of a ‘side spot,’” she said. “I’ve heard doctors say, for example, ‘well, when we’re done doing important things, we’ll get into the arts…’”
Comments like these underscored the necessity to convince medical doctors of what Margie said she and countless other caregivers already knew—that there is a powerful connection between arts and wellness. With this in mind, she said, “I became a determined person.”
In 2015, Margie married University of Florida alumnus, Chuck Steinmetz (BSA, ‘61). Two years later, the couple merged the existing Charles P. and Lynn Steinmetz Foundation (established by Chuck and his late wife, Lynn) and the Pabst Charitable Foundation to create the Pabst Steinmetz Foundation.
Chuck and Margie frequently visited Gainesville for Gators football games and UF Foundation meetings. On one such visit, they met Sonke, who invited them to the Center for Arts in Medicine.
Margie recalled: “After five years of working with arts and wellness, attending symposiums and working around the edges, I was thinking: ‘how can we demonstrate that this is really valid; that this is really essential?’ When I met Jill, I thought, ‘oh! This is the person I was meant to meet.’”
For Sonke, the feeling was mutual.
“Our first conversation was a transformational moment, because Margie is not only a brilliant thinker, but a brilliant philanthropist,” Sonke said. “She is someone who understands what investment can do to mobilize change, and who knows how to invest to mobilize change. She is also someone with deep lived experience at the intersection of the arts and health in her role as a care provider.
“She brought a unique understanding and a capability to partner, not only as a philanthropist and changemaker, but as a thought partner in how we could strategically do our work and position it for change.”
Crafting a shared language
Sonke recalls that, “thinking back to my very first conversation with Margie—we were very clear about the problem of language in the field.”
“We were seeing incredibly beautiful work happening across the country and around the world. But at the Center for Arts in Medicine, as a research center and as a leading educator in the field, we were seeing barriers to uptake and flourishing of the field. The absence of a shared language was one of the barriers we identified. It meant that there were limitations to employment for our students, and to the ability for those new to the field to find important research and practice models, as well as to network.”
When Sonke suggested developing a whitepaper to offer common language, Margie was quick to sign on, not only as a funder, but as an intellectual contributor. She participated in a series of roundtables where researchers from UF CAM worked with field leaders to co-author Talking about Arts in Health: A White Paper Addressing the Language used to Describe the Discipline from an Academic Perspective (2017).
“Margie's involvement as a thought partner and as a strategic partner really helped me understand how philanthropists make change—and how, in deep partnership with a research and educational center like the Center for Arts in Medicine in this field—we could really make change together. And we did,” Sonke said.
In laying the groundwork of consistent shared language, Talking About Arts in Health created a pathway for practitioners nationwide to communicate and comprehensively assess the intersection of the arts and health.
“It’s not that we wanted to legislate language for the field, but we wanted to provide a common language that could help arts and health programs and advocates advance their work so that there is a collective advancement in the field,” Sonke said.
Talking About Arts in Health became a landmark publication for the field, further solidifying the UF Center for Arts in Medicine as a national leader in arts in health.
Creating Healthy Communities: integrating the arts into the public health
As part of its broader vision to fill a critical gap at the national level, UF CAM set a goal to accelerate innovation where the arts and public health meet—sharing valuable insights with the public to nurture healthier communities that align with national health priorities. In partnership with ArtPlace America and close collaboration with Margie, UF CAM launched Creating Healthy Communities: Arts + Public Health in America Conference (CHC), a three-year initiative designed to bring together public health practitioners and thought leaders to demonstrate how the arts can enhance health and well-being in communities across the U.S.
Margie played an integral role in designing, facilitating, and promoting these convenings. Through her strategic outreach to other funders, she spearheaded significant philanthropic support to push ‘arts in public health’ more prominently into the mainstream during a pivotal moment—just as COVID-19 placed a spotlight on public health at the national and global scale.
“At our Creating Healthy Communities convenings, we hosted funder roundtables where Margie has helped garner the involvement of other funders,” Sonke said. “And bringing them to the table wasn’t about CAM getting funding—it was about philanthropists and funders organizing together, visioning together, strategizing together, and finding the best places and ways to invest in this field to advance the field.”
A series of nine Creating Healthy Communities (CHC) convenings brought together more than 500 thought leaders working in the arts, healthcare and public health sectors to develop, share and disseminate resources through strategic cross-sector collaboration. Over 500 people nationwide also participated in related research.
“In the CHC convenings, we're looking at on-the-ground experience coupled with research. And those are a powerful combination—like two train tracks that go together. We update people on: here's the latest research, and here's how it works. Here's how you can see it and feel it in your community. And when you put the two together—it's absolutely powerful,” Margie said.
In partnership with the Pabst Steinmetz Foundation, UF CAM and ArtPlace America published the Creating Healthy Communities through Cross-sector Collaboration white paper in 2019 as a comprehensive resource that pulls together the diverse stakeholder knowledge and best practices that were developed and shared across the CHC convenings.
Whereas the Talking About Arts in Health white paper defined vocabulary for the field, the CHC white paper builds out a broader call to action. It provides communities with tools to leverage the arts to address five areas in public health identified by CHC participants as most urgent: racism, social isolation and exclusion, mental health, chronic disease, and collective trauma.
“Like the language white paper, this publication marked a pivotal moment in the field of arts in public health wherein policymakers and public health leaders had a document they could rely on for language, for examples of how the arts can advance public health, and why artists and arts organizations are critical partners to public health,” Sonke said.
She noted: "Margie was with us in the thought process around the paper’s content, and she was instrumental in helping us think about who the audiences were. In fact, the paper is highly cited and has led directly to state and regional policy and investment in the arts for public health. It was used in the State of California to create the California Creative Cores program, which is a statewide program that has enabled investments in the arts and public health in 14 regions in California. This is a great example of how a widely available and accessible whitepaper can enable policy and investment."
A Paradigm Changer: data drives policy
What could it mean for the United States if the natural connections between arts and health are formalized into academic disciplines and professional sectors? What if health insurance covered the cost of activities like pottery classes that can help lower blood pressure, reduce cortisol levels, and relieve symptoms of arthritis?
The Arts on Prescription model, successfully piloted in the U.K., may offer a blueprint for bringing "social prescribing" to the U.S. healthcare system. Developed in 2020 as a National Endowment for the Arts Research Lab, with funding support from the Pabst Steinmetz Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies, the EpiArts Lab at the UF Center for Arts in Medicine works in partnership with University College London (UCL) to build on research conducted in the U.K. exploring the impacts of arts and cultural engagement on population health outcomes.
“Margie has a very clear understanding of the importance of research in driving the kind of social change that we believe this ‘seatbelt moment’ for arts and health can enable,” Sonke said.
Margie notes that “there are people who need to see [research evidence] that ‘if a senior goes to a concert at least once a month, there's a residual effect of the arts on their stress levels and on their loneliness levels.’ The EpiArts Lab is how we measure that.”
She asserts that the work underway in the EpiArts Lab is key to driving impact at the national level because it puts clear evidence on paper for legislators and health insurers to see—and build policies grounded in concrete data.
“It just seemed like such a quantum leap,” Margie said. “A paradigm changer, if you will, for the whole industry. So, I’ve supported it; I’ll continue to support it.”
In just four years since its inception, UF CAM’s EpiArts Lab has published 18 peer-reviewed research papers that present groundbreaking research supporting the health benefits of arts participation and the efficacy of social prescribing and arts prescribing.
Now, the field of arts in health has captured the attention of policymakers in Washington D.C.
Arriving at the ‘seatbelt moment’
On January 30, 2024, the White House Domestic Policy Council and the NEA co-hosted Healing, Bridging, Thriving: A Summit on Arts and Culture in our Communities—a “first-of-its-kind convening to share insights and explore opportunities for arts organizations and artists to contribute to the health and well-being of individual and communities, invigorate physical spaces, fuel democracy, and foster equitable outcomes.”
Sonke joined NYU’s Director of the Program in Drama Therapy and Theatre and Health Lab, Nisha Sajnani, PhD, RDT-BCT, and Harvard Medical School’s Associate Co-Director of the Arts and Humanities Initiative, Lisa Wong, MD, in Washington to convene and moderate the first-ever caucus on arts and health the day prior to this historic summit.
The White House summit and the EpiArts Lab's media exposure are an indication that the field of arts in health is on the road toward the ‘seatbelt moment’ that Margie envisions.
But she never loses sight of who remains at the center of the research, that is, every individual who deserves the opportunity to engage in the arts to heal; to widen, brighten, and expand their world: the lonely widower who attends a play with friends and laughs for the first time in months. The exhausted caregiver who processes grief through poetry. The teenager who attends their first symphony and has their world rocked by Bach. The combat veteran who finds peace in a blacksmithing studio.
“While UF CAM is fortunate to be able to engage with national and global leaders, like the National Endowment for the Arts and the World Health Organization, Margie has been very clear about the need to work on numerous levels, the need to convene, and the need to include everybody in those convenings,” Sonke said.
“She has been instrumental,” Sonke added, “in helping us provide scholarships to Creating Healthy Communities so that artists and changemakers and those who aren't institutionally supported can be there—and not only be there but speaking and sharing and leading in the convening. That’s because she recognizes that while institutions like the University of Florida drive a lot of change—the artists on the ground and in communities doing this work are essential to leading that change.”
And whether she’s attending a show at Steinmetz Hall in the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, or visiting an exhibition at Rollins Museum, where she sits on the board—Margie delights in the opportunity to converse with her fellow audience members and gallery visitors; to participate in the social cohesion the arts stimulate.
“It's about seeing yourself in the art, thinking about how the art relates to you, talking with your friends about the art. That's what's so essential,” she said.
“At Steinmetz Hall, we’ve made a huge effort to welcome all people—arts for every life; young, old, teenagers … there's no dress code, so that people can come as they are, as they want to come. When you go into the hall and you see a variety of demographics and ages and people responding in different ways—it's such a beautiful moment,” she adds.
"The city of Orlando is a diverse, inclusive, and welcoming community that strives to enhance residents' quality of life through collaboration and the power of partnership," said Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer. "We are fortunate to have organizations like the Pabst Steinmetz Foundation, which works to provide valuable arts and cultural opportunities for all and supports ensuring our community has access to meaningful experiences and health and wellness initiatives."
Driving the field forward
After two-plus decades of strategic collaboration and tireless on-the-ground work as a philanthropic and intellectual champion of the field, Margery Pabst Steinmetz believes that arts in health is on the cusp of breaking into the U.S. mainstream in a significant way.
Margie is among a rapidly growing, nationwide cohort of passionate changemakers who have claimed their space in the driver’s seat to advocate for change. It’s a seat she shares with UF Center for Arts in Medicine and EpiArts Lab researchers, as well as hundreds of artists, public health professionals and grassroots community movers-and-shakers across the U.S. who are determined to ensure that every American has access to the arts to better their health.
“She'll say things that are halting for me—things that make me think in directions I haven't thought of, and that are often critical in moving to the next step,” Sonke noted.
“We have to lobby people and get in their faces and say, ‘this is really essential! It'll save you money! Hello! You know the cost of healthcare, right?’ That's what I want to see happen next. That's what I think about in our journey,” Margie said.
So, buckle up, America.
“Margie has been such a critical thought leader and partner for the Center for Arts in Medicine and in the field. I'm in awe of the way she can cut to an insight that's so timely for us—and for that, I am extraordinarily grateful to her,” Sonke said.
“The ways in which Margie has enabled our work makes me say so often, ‘I wouldn't want to do the next thing without you.’ In fact, I can't imagine doing the next thing without her.”
