photo by: University of Kansas

The University of Kansas Health System campus is pictured in this file photo.

When searching for a healthy place to live, you may want to look beyond whether the community has a strong hospital. A thriving arts center also is likely worth seeking, a new study by University of Kansas researchers found.

A new study in The American Review of Public Administration found that communities with higher levels of “social infrastructure” — such as arts organizations, civic organizations, and residents with advanced levels of education — had better health outcomes.

The report’s authors — two researchers from KU’s School of Public Affairs & Administration and a KU doctoral graduate who is now a University of Delaware researcher — argue the findings should lead community leaders to consider the mix of funding provided to health care organizations versus social organizations.

“When people think about health, they often think of health care,” said Dorothy Daley, professor in the School of Public Affairs & Administration and the Environmental Studies Program at KU, one of the study’s authors. “That is actually just one small part of how healthy a person is. Where you live, where you work, where you go to school all shape your health, and we’re finding cultural capital can as well.”

For the study, researchers assembled and analyzed data from a variety of existing sources. Local health data was drawn from the County Health Ranking and Roadmap project. Social infrastructure measures were constructed using data measuring a range of civic organizations (social capital), educational attainment (human capital) and density of local arts organizations (cultural capital).

“Social infrastructure matters when it comes to public health outcomes, just like other factors we might think of more often like air quality,” said lead author Alisa Moldavanova, an associate professor at the University of Delaware who earned her doctorate from KU.

The authors said the data shows the percentage of people reporting fair or poor health declines as the amount of social, human and cultural capital increases in a community. The authors said those findings should bolster arguments that funding for arts and cultural projects should receive similar consideration as more traditional health considerations, such as number of hospital beds and number of health care professionals in a community.

“We should be mindful as policymakers of supporting cultural infrastructure,” Moldavanova said. “It provides a sense of well-being at the community level. Even in communities without top-notch hospitals, the connection has positive effects. We shouldn’t be only looking at hospitals and physicians when thinking about health outcomes.”