About two years ago, then-juniors, Melody Yazdi and Zachary Song realized that hospitals needed more humanity. Yazdi and Song were premedical students when they decided to find a way to help patients rediscover their identities and offer a more holistic recovery experience, so they started Art Rehabilitation Therapy. 

ART is a USC student organization that partners with nearby hospitals to bring free art classes to patients in need, helping them build community and a path to self-expression. 

“Melody and I really wanted to start something where we can create an environment that’s not as sterile as a patient room and take [a patient’s] mind off of what their diagnosis may be or what they’re going through mentally,” Song said.

Both co-founders saw the need for a program like ART through personal experiences with the healthcare system and witnessing the gap in care they are trying to address. 

Yazdi said the guiding question was how to “build something where there is a space for a patient to physically recover but also recover in the identity that they may have felt like they’re losing [or that] they have lost.” 

ART organizes programming at Luskin Orthopaedic Institute for Children, about a mile away from University Park Campus, and at the Health Science Campus’s USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. The latter is part of a partnership with the Institute for Arts in Medicine, which is part of Keck Medicine of USC. 

I_AM brings music, visual arts and poetry to patient care to reduce anxiety, depression and stress. 

“When you’re dealing with a diagnosis such as cancer, there are so many psychological adversities, and there’s a huge percentage of people who suffer from PTSD as a result,” said Genevieve Nelson, a USC alum as well as the creative director and co-founder of I_AM. “Creating positive associations with these healthcare settings becomes very important, and also helping patients feel a sense of progress when they come.”

For Yazdi and Song, the partnership with I_AM was an important step in the organization’s journey. Prior to this partnership, they began by bringing their classes to OIC, but soon realized that the nature of an outpatient clinic meant volunteers could not build relationships with patients and work with them over time. 

“Transitioning from OIC to the I_AM Institute … was actually a big shift, because when we transitioned to the Norris cancer hospital, we were able to build a rapport with the patients,” Yazdi said. “At OIC, what you’re doing is helping these younger children get their mind off of whatever ailment they might have … but with the Keck patients, there’s also some beauty in being able to be with the patient [and see long-term impacts].”

According to Song, inclusivity was a significant part of their recruitment process — including ensuring that ART was open to students outside of the premed track as well. The club has about 35 volunteers working between the two facilities.

“At the end of the day, we’re a service club; we want to have as many people who want to help be able to help, and we don’t really want to exclude anyone from that opportunity to volunteer with us,” Song said. “It is very cool to see the integration of Roski [School of Art and Design] kids, or even pre-meds who had previous experience in art, have the opportunity to use their previous skills in a clinical [setting].”

One such volunteer was Adrian Della Rossa, who majored in art and recently graduated from USC. He joined the club at the beginning of 2026 in an effort to make a difference in his community through his passion for art. 

“They’re not only patients, but they’re my friends, and they’re just people trying to enjoy the life that they have and that they’re given,” Della Rossa said. “I always felt like even though you’re stationary when you’re doing art, your mind could take you anywhere. Your mind could take you to so many different places that could alleviate these pains. … It’s literally therapeutic.”

Through the organization’s classes, Della Rossa had the opportunity to build a connection with Joseph Andrade, a patient at Norris cancer center.  

“Joseph in particular is like my best friend,” Della Rossa said. “Joseph sadly is blinded, so this was a new experience for an artist like me to show art without [the recipient] even being able to visually see it. So my way was to make an art piece that has more extra texture.”

Della Rossa painted Andrade a blue lowrider in a Los Angeles cityscape, using extra materials to build up texture around parts of the painting such as the car rims and the palm trees. The work now hangs in Andrade’s room. 

“I used to do art before I lost my eyesight,” Andrade said. “[Art] makes you heal.”

The program helped motivate Andrade to use music to express himself to loved ones in ways he hadn’t previously felt comfortable doing. He said that through art, he is not worried about his PTSD anymore and has been able to parse through his trauma.

Looking forward, the co-founders hope ART is able to expand into more hospitals and assisted living facilities in the L.A. area. Yazdi is inspired to do so, having seen the direct impact their work has had on patients. 

“One of the weeks that we were having an art session, a patient [walked] in, and she had just come back from her chemo treatment and, despite that, she was so excited to talk to us about doing a painting on her walls,” Yazdi said. “She wasn’t thinking about her chemo treatment; she was thinking about how she was going to draw this beautiful painting on her fireplace wall.”