Building the economic business case for creative health

Hosted on Thursday 22 October 2026 Creative health economics: new guidance on economic evaluation in creative health • How do we build confidence among funders, commissioners, and policymakers to invest in creative health? • How do we provide cost and economic evidence to demonstrate value for money? • How can we support long-term sustainability and embed creative health into the Neighbourhood Model of Health? Over the past few months the Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities research programme has been researching these questions, and more. Despite a growing evidence base, a significant stumbling block in the closer relationship between the creative health ecosystem and health, is the lack of a defined business case that sets out the economic basis for commissioning. Through a series of co-production and participatory research activities MCA has been examining what outcomes matter most to communities, how value is understood and evidenced, and what support is needed to support evaluation feasibility in Creative Health. In this webinar MCA heard from some of the researchers involved in growing the evidence base for Creative Health Economics, including Daniel Fujiwara who has been leading on MCA’s economic analyses. Daniel and team was joined by Prof Vicky Karkou (Arts4Us, Edge Hill University) and Greg Flynn (Bangor University) who shared details of an upcoming systematic review on the Economic Impact of the Arts on the Health and Wellbeing of Children and Young People. Dr Feifei Bu and Prof Daisy Fancourt (UCL) also share details of a recent study assessing the impact of social prescribing on health service utilisation. Links Find out more here