Health and Wellness – Resources

American Music Therapy Association

A service organization for music therapists, with a mission to advance public awareness of the benefits of music therapy and increase access to quality music therapy services in a rapidly changing world. The AMTA provides fact sheets, resources, and bibliographies on music therapy for specific populations, as well as links to journals and other resources.

Art Pharmacy

Healthcare providers (primary care, behavioral health, oncology, etc.) enroll as Prescribing Partners, receiving training to support the arts prescribing process. Art Pharmacy’s team then matches patients with the most effective arts engagements and addresses barriers to access (such as the need for caregiver or transportation assistance). Orchestras—among others—make tickets available for Art Pharmacy to provide to patients. Art Pharmacy provides a helpful outline of the process for cultural partners.

Berklee College of Music Community Health Musician Certificate

A nine-month program blending remote coursework with in-person weekend intensives, empowering musicians and community leaders to use their musical skills to enhance the well-being of others. The curriculum covers music, health, and well-being; arts in health research and practice; ethical and cultural considerations; musicianship tools; and community program development.

Center for Music and Medicine at Johns Hopkins University

A network of initiatives spanning research, clinical care, and education, with a dual mission: making music and rhythm an integral part of neurological illness treatment and improving the health of musicians worldwide.

Comfort Sound Drumming

A drum circle experience designed to reduce pain, distress, and anxiety, and improve mood and energy, and a potential model for orchestras to emulate. Developed by John R. Beck, percussion instructor at Wake Forest University, in partnership with Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

International Association for Music and Medicine

A membership organization encouraging and supporting the use of music in medical contexts, including research into the benefits of music and its specialized applications in healthcare. Membership provides opportunities to network with members around the world, access to the journal Music and Medicine, and attendance at its biennial conference.

Jameel Arts & Health Lab

A global initiative to measurably improve health and well-being through the arts. With a focus on overlooked and underserved communities, the Lab leverages scientific evidence, artist-led advocacy, and capacity building to drive the integration of the arts into mainstream healthcare. Partners include the World Health Organization, New York University Steinhardt, Community Jameel (a global philanthropy), and Culturunners (a UK nonprofit). Orchestras may access resources including a toolkit for introducing social prescribing at a local community level and a report on how arts engagement can help to build vaccine confidence.

The Jed Foundation

A nonprofit that protects emotional health and prevents suicide for our nation’s teens and young adults by building resiliency and life skills, promoting social connectedness, and encouraging help-seeking and help-giving behaviors through nationally recognized programs, digital channels, and partnerships, as well as through the media. The Foundation’s website includes useful language on how music can improve mental health.

Louis Armstrong Department of Music Therapy at Mt. Sinai Beth Israel

Music therapists at the Louis Armstrong Department of Music Therapy conduct daily sessions with patients in intensive care, maternity, neonatal intensive care, pediatric emergency, oncology, and pain medicine and palliative care, including hospice. The department publishes findings on a wide variety of music therapy research projects and an extensive bibliography of studies.

Music and Mind Live with Renée Fleming

Nineteen-episode series of videos featuring Renée Fleming in conversation with scientists and practitioners working at the intersection of music, neuroscience, and healthcare. Fleming is also the editor of a comprehensive guide to the scientific evidence for music’s impact on health and wellness: Music and Mind, Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness.

National Alliance on Mental Illness

The Alliance provides a comprehensive resource for information on mental illness, training for families, caregivers, and mental health professionals, and links to reports on critical, emerging issues to help inform the public about the importance of effective mental health policy.

National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health

“Music and Health: What You Need to Know” provides a summary of useful language and findings on music’s impact on a wide range of disorders, from one of the Institutes and Centers of the NIH.

National Institute on Aging

One of the Institutes and Centers of the National Institute of Health, NIA leads a broad scientific effort to understand the nature of aging and to extend the healthy, active years of life. Site contains descriptions of studies funded by NIA on effects of music on dementia, potentially useful in program design.

NeuroArts Blueprint

The NeuroArts Blueprint: Advancing the Science of Arts, Health, and Wellbeing Initiative sits at the intersection of science, the arts, and technology. A partnership between the Johns Hopkins International Arts + Mind Lab Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics and the Aspen Institute’s Health, Medicine & Society Program, the initiative aims to strengthen, standardize, and advance the transdisciplinary study of how the arts and aesthetic experiences measurably affect the brain, body, and behavior—and how this knowledge can be applied to improve health and well-being.

Social Prescribing USA

The principal American hub calling for the use of the arts, volunteerism, nature, and local community organizations as medicine for patients of all ages, Social Prescribing USA supports advocacy and research, connects local organizations engaged with this work, identifies best practices, and builds a national group of implementers, including physicians, to put into practice and promote social prescribing with cultural organizations across the country in a range of medical settings.

Sound Health Initiative

A partnership of the National Institutes of Health and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in association with the National Endowment for the Arts, aiming to expand understanding of how music interacts with brain circuitry, explore ways to enhance the potential for music as therapy for neurological disorders, identify future opportunities for research, and create public awareness about how the brain functions and interacts with music. The initiative also provides links to studies on music and health.

Sound Health Network

Promoting research and public awareness about the impact of music on health and wellness, the Sound Health Network engages a broad range of multidisciplinary stakeholders—including scientists, music therapists, musicians, clinicians, patients, music and arts organizations, funders and the general public. Through its coordinating role, it facilitates individual and collaborative efforts that promote the quality, quantity, and relevance of research at the intersections of music, neuroscience, health, and wellness across the lifespan, advancing the potential of music to improve everyone’s lives.

The Well: Mindful Music Moments

Brief audio content for 40 weeks of daily in-school listening, supported by classroom materials that encourage mindfulness. Orchestras can access and curate Mindful Music Moments for local schools.

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Photo: Children at the MD Anderson Cancer Center are given a menu of musical options, devised through collaboration between a Houston Symphony musician and a hospital music therapist. The menu gives the child agency in picking the music they want to hear, and also allows the music therapist to guide the child towards types of music (e.g. “soothing” or “sing-along”) that support clinical goals. Photo courtesy of the Houston Symphony.