The Behavioural and Cultural Insights Unit at the WHO Regional Office for Europe is hosting a one-day meeting dedicated to the role of the arts in health care, featuring a multicountry pilot study titled “Music and Motherhood”. The event is a collaboration with the Jameel Arts & Health Lab, supported by Central Denmark Region.
Interweaving music, live sketches, poetry, and arts breaks with panel sessions, presentations, and collaborative group discussions, the meeting will involve a deep dive into the potential for culture and the arts to support health systems and improve health and well-being.
Participants include cultural and health policy-makers, global experts in the field, project partners and, of course, arts practitioners: from musicians to visual artists, from dancers to poets and hospital clowns!
A part of the programme will focus on “Music and Motherhood” – a multicountry, WHO-led implementation study of an arts intervention supporting mothers who experience postpartum depression. Built around group singing sessions specifically designed for affected mothers, the project was conducted in 3 WHO/Europe Member States (Denmark, Italy and Romania) to determine the feasibility of implementing the intervention in other cultural contexts.
The objectives of this meeting are to:
showcase the results of the “Music and Motherhood” implementation study and the resultant thinking tool, designed to help to implement arts and health projects in various contexts;
discuss the barriers and drivers to promote arts participation as a health behaviour; and
illustrate how Member States are using social prescribing as a mechanism to integrate arts activities and interventions into their health systems.
