CLEVELAND, Ohio — Can changing our environment change our health? Learn about the lasting and life-changing power of social prescribing — or adding meaning and connections to life — when journalist Julia Hotz speaks about her book “The Connection Cure: The Prescriptive Power of Movement, Nature, Art, Service, and Belonging.”

Hotz will take part in a free virtual program sponsored by the Cuyahoga County Public Library system at 2 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 20. Registration is required. The day before the event, participants will receive an email with a link to join the session.

“The Connection Cure” combines diligent science reporting, moving patient success stories, and surprising self-discovery to help readers discover the lasting and life-changing power of social prescribing. The book (336 pages, Simon and Schuster, $17.19) was published in June.

Science shows that including art, nature, movement and volunteer service — called social prescribing — in patients’ lives is effective for treating depression, ADHD, addiction, trauma, anxiety, chronic pain, dementia, diabetes and loneliness, according to Hotz.

“With interesting stories and a broad canvas, Hotz connects readers to a different way of thinking about health and wellness,” according to a Kirkus review of the book.

Hotz traveled the world to learn about treatments such as sea-swimming lessons for depression, a fishing club for ADHD, a farm-based day-care for dementia, a phone-buddy program for social isolation, and many more.

“Instead of replacing other kinds of medicine, social prescriptions complement them, offering healing that pills and procedures can’t offer alone,” she writes. “Instead of just treating symptoms of sickness, social prescriptions reconnect us to our sources of wellness.”

Hotz is a New York-based journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, WIRED, Scientific American, the Boston Globe, Time and other publications.