Art with heart: Making children's health wards less scary

Artist Jose Parla spent several days last week decorating bedrooms, hallways and common areas of the Incarnation Children's Center in his signature improvisational style, the latest project in a charitable effort that commissions top contemporary artists to make pediatric health facilities less intimidating.

[...] former art dealer Diane Brown founded RxArt 15 years ago out of her own claustrophobia of CAT scan machines.

"Having the monkey faces on the scanner ... feels more like this would be like an amusement park ride, something that's a fun experience, not something to be frightened of," the celebrated pop artist says in a RxArt video of his project created in 2010.

Turner Simkins, whose 14-year-old son Brennan spent three years at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, with acute myeloid leukemia, said the large panda paintings by Rob Pruitt in the hospital's multipurpose room are a cheerful respite from despair.

Some past medical research has suggested that pleasant environmental stimuli, like natural sunlight and music, might affect patient well-being or help motivate health care workers to deliver better care, though there isn't evidence yet of a strong correlation.