Health Education Literacy and Mobility for Musicians: a global approach - Part II

Research output: Contribution to conferenceConference presentation/ephemera

Abstract

Funded by a grant from the Worldwide Universities Network Research Development Fund and generous contributions by partner WUN and WUN+ institutions, this project aimed to build a global research network to address the need for both health education mobility and improved health literacy for musicians world-wide. Music participation is widely acknowledged to have health benefits across the lifespan and to diminish cultural divides. Paradoxically, despite its global popularity and community benefits, the act of making music involves highly repetitive actions under psychologically demanding conditions. Research indicates this may result in a high injury risk for musicians, irrespective of age, musical style, genre or cultural background. It is essential for health promotion to become embedded in the education of musicians to improve health outcomes over their lifespan. This project created an interdisciplinary, multicultural research network focused on developing innovative, sustainable, effective and accessible approaches to musicians’ health education in higher education settings. The project built on existing international collaborations between Australian and Canadian researchers, adding experienced researchers from the Netherlands, New Zealand and South Africa, to form a global perspective on this important public health issue. All team members have substantial track records in health education and research for musicians, yet they have different but complementary expertise and skill sets. Team members met in two intensive collaborative workshops at WUN universities in 2018 to design a large-scale, international research program investigating provision of health education literacy and mobility for musicians, embedding health education into music teaching, and translational applications of an existing online learning resource for musicians’ health.

The Musicians' Health Literacy Consortium was formed in this workshop, which marked the continuation of collaborative work on the project and focused on developing research projects to enact the research agenda outlined in Part I. This included: 1) developing a musician-specific health literacy assessment tool; 2) designing a multi-centre cohort study on delivery of musicians' health education online; and 3) developing approaches to embed health education into teaching practice for musicians in higher education using online delivery.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 27 Aug 2018

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Health Education Literacy and Mobility for Musicians: a global approach - Part II'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this