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The Arts and the Heart Campaign, orchestrated and led by the Foundation for Art and Healing, is a multi-year initiative whose goal is to better understand the potential benefits of artistic and creative engagement in reducing heart disease and importantly, to make those benefits available to individuals and communities.

The Campaign has three primary components: 1) a world-class roundtable event, 2) a groundbreaking research advisory group and a high-impact community outreach program; and 3) an ongoing evaluation program.

Special Thanks to our Major Sponsors

Roundtable Event with Subject Matter Experts

• Download the Advisory Board and Roundtable Participants PDF

The unique Arts and the Heart Campaign began with a multidisciplinary roundtable in New York City in June 2009. The roundtable reflects the need to get a 360º orientation to the art, healing and heart disease dialogue in order to best grasp its fullest potential. Participants reviewed and discussed summaries of what is already evident in the area of art and heart disease, assessed the state of that knowledge, and identified gaps that can be addressed by future research. Equally important, the roundtable group brainstormed how to transfer knowledge into our communities.

The roundtable provided a spirited opportunity for the development of additional important issues, such as how best to create more awareness of the art and healing relationship in individuals and communities suffering from health disparities, how to create a sustained and effective dialog among relevant stakeholders that endures and grows over time, and how to pave the way for additional research, knowledge creation and outreach.

The roundtable was video- and audio-taped. A transcript will soon be available as part of the published proceedings of the event.

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Research and Community Outreach Programs:
Building Momentum

Following the roundtable, two specific working groups will be formed, a research advisory group and a community outreach program group.

The Research Program

The Research Program’s charter will be to help the Foundation identify and prioritize gaps in our current knowledge related to art and the heart that can be addressed through sponsored research initiatives.

The research opportunities that will be considered within the scope of the Campaign are quite broad. They include initiatives that explore the physiologic impact of artistic engagement using a range or research modalities and methods, including Functional Brain Imaging, cardiac rhythm monitoring, and metabolic evaluation of cardiac functioning. Additionally, behavioral and social science research methodologies could yield powerful new insights into what works and what doesn’t in approaching heart disease with arts-based interventions.

Presentations and submission of research in peer-reviewed journals will be encouraged, sponsored by the Foundation.

The Community Outreach Program

This group will target effective community outreach by advising the Foundation on effective grant-making as well as the development of strategies and tools that can be made available directly to groups within the community.

Community outreach, and specifically the development of sustainable community-based programming, is already a core activity of the Foundation for Art and Healing. Building on this competency, the Foundation will seek opportunities to encourage the development of Arts and the Heart programs at community centers, schools, museums, and similar institutions.

As in research, the ability to conduct periodic convening with invited participants and leaders in the fields of community health to maintain a continued dialogue on this topic will be a high priority.

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Ongoing Evaluation Program: Committing to Scientific Rigor and Effectiveness

Both advisory groups will be tasked with assisting the Foundation with the development of a robust evaluation framework which will be used to manage the effectiveness of both the research and community outreach programs. We believe that the linkage of a sustained research program with effective community outreach and support is a timely and important contribution that the Foundation is uniquely positioned to orchestrate. The power of that linkage, however, will be best achieved by making sure that all activities and their impact are rigorously and continuously evaluated.

Why is now the time to launch this initiative?

The burden of heart disease on individuals and our communities is well known. Importantly, receptivity for new perspectives on how to address this crisis, including the ability for meditation, guided imagery, yoga and other voluntary personal activities to lead to “states of mind and body” that can have a positive impact on heart disease is increasingly understood and accepted. We are confident that provocative early research clearly indicates that an important and vital relationship between heart disease and artistic engagement exists.

Given the prevalence of cardiovascular disease and the urgency for addressing a solution, we believe it is particularly timely to assess what is already known, what would be useful to know that we currently do not, and what approaches might be best undertaken to generate new knowledge and effective interventions.

Despite the fact that our current understanding is in its infancy, the sheer numbers of people who could potentially benefit and the sound base of research in related areas is compelling. Because so many people have an interest in and access to artistic engagement and so much is potentially to be gained, we think this is a humanistic and public health opportunity that merits serious and sustained commitment through the Arts and the Heart Campaign!

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