Health Literacy and Health Education Mobility for Musicians: a global approach

Led by Associate Professor Suzanne Wijsman of the UWA Conservatorium of Music, this international, interdisciplinary project has built a global research network to address the need for improved health literacy and health education mobility for musicians worldwide, with the support of a Worldwide Universities Network Research Development Grant and partner institutions. 

Music participation has both societal and health benefits throughout a person’s life. However, despite its global popularity and community benefits, the act of making music also involves highly repetitive actions under psychologically demanding conditions that may result in a high risk of injury for musicians, irrespective of age, musical style, genre or cultural background. 

Forming the Musicians' Health Literacy Consortium, this project identified three research priorities:

1. Musicians' occupational health literacy: We seek to understand the role of musicians' occupational health literacy and its role in promoting healthy, life-long music-making and occupational resilience. This included developing and validating the world’s first occupational health literacy assessment tool for musicians, the MHL-Q19, leading to new collaborations to translate this survey tool into other languages. 
2. A multicentre international implementation trial of Sound Performers: This research seeks to evaluate the efficacy of different health education delivery modes and add-on components to the online musicians’ health education course, soundperformers.com, contributed by team members from their diverse expertise. Implementation has occurred at international study sites in Canada, New Zealand and South Africa.
3. Developing translational models for the application of health education in instrumental and vocal teaching practice: By researching music educators’ perceptions in an international survey and interviews in Training Sound Performers, we are gaining new knowledge about the important role of instrumental and vocal music teachers in promoting healthy practice and optimal performance outcomes, and their professional development needs for musicians’ health education. 

An international research team formed through this project is designing a large-scale, international research program to investigate how to improve health education mobility for musicians, how to embed health education into higher education settings across multiple cultural and geographical regions, and multi-model translational applications of an existing, expert-designed online musicians’ health education resource, Sound Performers. 

Two intensive collaborative research workshops were held in 2018, the first in April was hosted by the Institute of Advanced Studies at UWA, and the second in August was at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. An Insight Development Grant from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (2018-2020) has been awarded for one sub-project in this global collaboration.

The project’s research agenda was presented at the 2018 Performing Arts Medicine Association Annual Symposium in the United States, Osnabrück MusicPhysio International Congress in Germany, and Australian Society for Performing Arts Healthcare conference in Sydney. 

The initial stage of this project involved two intensive face-to-face workshops in 2018 six months apart at UWA and Maastricht University. A highlight of continuing collaboration has included the MHL-Q19 validation study that was carried out in populations of tertiary music students in 13 institutions worldwide. This project also has led to new collaborative research initiatives by MHLC members, including award of Insight Development and Partnership Development Grants from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (2018-2025), a visiting research fellowship at Royal Northern College of Music (2019), an Australia Council for the Arts international engagement fund grant (2022-2025), and a UWA Research Collaboration Award (2024), expanding the collaboration and supporting the development of its research agenda.

Outcomes from this project have been presented at the Performing Arts Medicine Association Annual Symposium (Los Angeles), the International Symposium on Performance Science (Melbourne), and the Australian Society for Performing Arts Healthcare conference (Sydney), with co-authored publications appearing in field-leading peer-reviewed journals.

Collaboration and funding

The project built and expanded on existing Australian and International collaborations to acquire a global perspective on this important problem facing musicians worldwide. 

Funded by a Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) Research Development Fund Grant with generous contributions by UWA and partner universities, this project addressed the WUN Global Challenges of Public Health (non-communicable diseases) and Global Higher Education and Research.

• Associate Professor Bronwen Ackermann, University of Sydney
• Associate Professor Rae de Lisle, University of Auckland
• Professor Peter Visentin, University of Lethbridge
• Professor Jane Ginsborg, Royal Northern College of Music
• Associate Professor Christine Guptill, University of Ottawa
• Dr. Vera Baadjou, Maastricht University
• Dr. Bridget Rennie-Salonen, Stellenbosch University

• Dr. Mary Roduta-Roberts, University of Alberta
• Teri Slade, University of Alberta
• Professor Rob de Bie, Maastricht University
• Professor Helmut Brand, Maastricht University
• Dr. Sonia Ranelli, Curtin University
• Professor Dawn Bennett, Bond University