Janurary 7, 2025
Join us as we kick off 2025 with Preventive Art Therapy: The Ethical Intersection of Art Therapy and Public Health, our first virtual continuing education session of the year, hosted by Erica Curtis, LMFT, ATR-BC, Nadia F. Paredes, MA, LMFT, ATR, and Ping Ho, MA, MPH.
In this session, Erica, Ping and Nadia will use their combined expertise to explore the ethical intersection of art therapy and public health, emphasizing the importance of addressing mental health proactively to create lasting, sustainable change.
Preventing mental health issues is essential for fostering inclusive, equitable, and thriving communities. Art therapy offers non-stigmatizing, scalable, and resilience-building practices that can intervene early, mitigating risks before they escalate into serious challenges. By integrating art therapy into clinical and community settings, we can empower individuals and groups to build stronger mental health foundations.
Whether you’re a clinician, educator, or community leader, this session will enable you to:
- Identify how art therapy can serve as a preventive tool to offset the negative impacts of adverse childhood events (ACEs) across diverse settings.
- Recognize ethical considerations and solutions when adapting clinical theories and tools for non-clinical environments such as schools, homes, or communities.
- Implement art therapy interventions that support early intervention, resilience-building, and the prevention of long-term mental health issues in any clinical or community setting.
Session attendees may earn 2 CE credits that are ATCB, NBCC, and LCAT eligible.
Meet the Presenters
Erica Curtis, LMFT, ATR-BC
Erica Curtis is a board-certified art therapist, licensed marriage and family therapist, award-winning author, and sought-after speaker. With a private practice in San Juan Capistrano, Erica is also a core instructor for the Arts & Healing Initiative and Admissions Consultant for Loyola Marymount University’s art therapy department. A trusted expert, she has been featured in over 100 media outlets, including PBS, USA Today, and Cosmo.
Erica’s books, The Innovative Parent, Art Therapy Activities for Kids, and Working with Anger Creatively, reflect her expertise in creative wellness for diverse ages and needs. She provides consultation, supervision, and arts-based program development for organizations like The Getty Center and L’Oréal. A past president of the Southern California Art Therapy Association, and past director for the American Art Therapy Association, Erica has received multiple honors for her contributions to the field.
Nadia F. Paredes, MA, LMFT, ATR
Through her expressive arts programs, Nadia Paredes helps people connect with their inner creativity and empower their minds and souls. Nadia founded Nadia Paredes – Creative Studio, a bilingual resource for empowering, healing, and artistic inspiration. With expertise and training as an Art Therapist, Intuition Painting Facilitator, and Licensed Marital and Family Therapist, she creates programs for transformation, creativity, and art-making as a mindfulness practice. Nadia also works in corporate wellness as a speaker and workshop facilitator and is an Adjunct Professor and Art Therapy Supervisor at Loyola Marymount University.
Ping Ho, MA, MPH.
Ping is Founder and Director of the nonprofit organization, Arts & Healing Initiative. She spearheaded the development of the Certificate Program in Social Emotional Arts (SEA) and the SEA Toolkit: Supportive Art, Movement, Music & Writing for Individuals or Groups in Any Setting. In addition, she co-developed and served as principal investigator for the evidence-based program, Beat the Odds®: Social and Emotional Skill Building Delivered in a Framework of Drumming.
Ping is associate editor for the Creative Arts Therapies section of the Journal of Integrative and Complementary Medicine, and she is co-author (with Erica Curtis) of the 2019 National Parenting Products Award-winning book, The Innovative Parent: Raising Connected, Happy, Successful Kids through Art (Ohio University/Swallow Press). Ping was founding administrator of the UCLA Collaborative Centers for Integrative Medicine (now the UCLA Integrative Medicine Collaborative) and UCLA Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, which led to the privilege of writing for Norman Cousins and co-writing the professional autobiography of George F. Solomon, M.D., founder of the field.
She has a BA in psychology with honors from Stanford—where she was appointed to initiate the still-thriving Health Improvement Program for faculty and staff, an MA in counseling psychology with specialization in exercise physiology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an MPH in community health sciences from UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.