The mission of the Sound Health Network in the USA is to promote research and public awareness about the impact of music on health and wellness. The Sound Health Network attempts to engage a broad range of multidisciplinary stakeholders – including scientists, music therapists, musicians, clinicians, patients, music and arts organizations, funders and the general public. Through their coordinating role, they facilitate 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 all our lives.
The Sound Health Network is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts, in partnership with the University of California, San Francisco, in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Renée Fleming. The Network emerged from the Sound Health Initiative.
Moderated by Dan Cohen, Dr. Julene Johnson will talk with us about opportunities to join and collaborate with the Sound Health Network.
Julene K Johnson is a cognitive neuroscientist with an undergraduate degree in music. She is a Professor in the UCSF School of Nursing’s Institute for Health & Aging and co-director of the Sound Health Network. She has a long-standing interest in studying music and health in both healthy aging and persons living with dementia. She also leads the Music & Dementia Research Network, which aims to accelerate mechanistic studies of music in the context of dementia. Her previous work investigated preserved music skills in persons with Alzheimer disease and understanding the relationship between brain and music recognition in various neurodegenerative diseases. In 2010, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Jyväskylä, Finland where she studied how community choirs help promote wellbeing among older adults. Funded by the National Institute on Aging, Dr. Johnson led the Community of Voices study, a large cluster-randomized trial that examined the effects of a community choir on the health and wellbeing of culturally diverse older adults. Dr. Johnson also examines the historical roots of music in nineteenth-century neurology and psychology literature, which helps frame interdisciplinary research questions about music, brain, and health. She is a co-author of the NEA Guide to Community-Engaged Research in the Arts and Health. In her spare time, she plays the flute and kantele and sings in community choir.