The SHAPER dissemination event held at the Science Gallery London on 19th November 2024.
On Tuesday 19th November, the SHAPER research team and programme delivery partners came together to disseminate their research findings to an audience of key stakeholders.
SHAPER (Scaling-up health arts programmes: implementation and effectiveness research) is a £2.6 million research programme funded by Wellcome, led by Professor Carmine Pariante and Professor Daisy Fancourt, that aimed to assess the effectiveness and implementation of 3 arts-in-health interventions: Melodies for Mums for Postnatal Depression, Dance for Parkinson’s (PD-ballet®), and Stroke Odysseys and embed them in clinical pathways thereby strengthening the case for NHS Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) to recommend and fund such interventions in the long-term.
Arts in health, or arts for health, is now commonly known as Creative Health. Creative health is an innovative approach to enhancing mental and physical well-being through the power of the arts. By integrating creative activities into healthcare and community settings, it offers a holistic way to support individuals' health and resilience. We were delighted to be joined by Dr. Simon Opher MP who has pioneered and championed creative health in Stroud over the last 30 years. Simon is the new chair of the All-party Parliamentary Group for Creative Health and told us about his experience in this field, having introduced artists into his surgery and advocated for green prescribing, which led to him founding Artlift in 2006, a programme that offers arts-on-prescription for people with mental health issues or chronic pain.
The event was introduced by Professor Carmine Pariante and Ms. Beatrice Pembroke (Executive Director, Culture) followed by Professor Ioannis Bakolis who introduced the concept of Implelmentation Science and explained its key role in the SHAPER study.
Our first case study- Stroke Odysseys (SO), was summarized by researchers Jean Harrington and Caroline Ellis-Hill, after we had seen a moving and uplifting film by Chris Lawrence, about the SO programme. Our research focused on assessing the impact of the programme on the wellbeing of the participants - why it was life enhancing and why many of the participants became ambassadors of the programme. Jean focused on how the programme enhanced social and emotional well-being and increased the confidence and self-esteem of the participants. She explained the importance of kinship and performance – how participants placed trust in each other and worked towards a performance; the latter being key in giving a sense of ‘triumph over adversity’. Caroline explained the powerful impact of the ‘ambassadors programme’ – i.e. how ambassadors transform from rehabilitation service users to rehabilitation service providers.
I think we're very much like a family now. ….. We did the opera together, which was the most exciting thing in the world, because it wasn't just us. It was the choir from a hospital of nurses, and real-life proper opera singers at a real-life proper op .. It was very, very exciting and part of the opera was about a bit of my story, which was the most emotional thing ever - Fiona
Lorna Greenwood then introduced and showed their film about Breathe Arts Health Research and their Melodies for Mums programme (M4M). M4M is a 10-week singing programme for mums with post-natal depression- the team assessed, through a randomized controlled clinical trial (RCT), the effectiveness of the programme in reducing the symptoms of depression. Dr Rebecca Bind presented the results of this RCT conducted with 199 participants. We saw how M4M is effective at reducing symptoms of postnatal depression and anxiety- both via online and in-person delivery and how the benefits are long-lasting (8 months after the last session). She described how mothers are more attuned to their infants in their interactions, have a lower stress response, and are more biologically in sync with their babies compared to the mothers who did not recieve the intervention. She also presented some economic analysis data showing that M4M is a good investment for the NHS/local authorities healthcare commissioners, and how the mothers who took part found the intervention to be better than already-existing community activities.
Dr Alex Burton (UCL) then spoke about the qualitative implementation research. Alex and the team had conducted semi-structured interviews with M4M participants and professional stakeholders in a bid to understand the key active “ingredients” of the melodies for mums (M4M) singing programme that affected its perceived acceptability, feasibility and appropriateness. She concluded that ‘people ingredients’ (e.g. Skills/ values of music leads or it being a shared mother & baby activity) and ‘project ingredients’ (e.g. group singing & diversity of songs) are key to the implementation success, and how the findings could help with the design and adaptation of future creative mental health programmes.
“It has been transformative to everything….we were in this bubble of motherhood, the negative side, a lot of times I was living in a parallel world, you know, its normal to be up at 3am when the rest of the world is asleep... And I felt I had the songs, a bit of company. And I knew I will be going out (to M4M) on Tuesday. It might be raining, we will get there. Sometimes I will probably be in my pyjamas, clothes I hadn’t fully got changed in. But I knew I had to go. And I knew, because we started in winter, I knew that after the 10 weeks, Spring was coming, it was going to be a different season. And we would have moved on to a different place” - Anonymous
The third and final case study was the English National Ballet’s PD-ballet® programme. The team investigated how ballet, as a creative health intervention, could improve non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s. Fleur Derbyshire-Fox gave the background to the programme and introduced their wonderful film about delivery and research.
Aleksandra Podlewska outlined the clinical trial data that demonstrated significant improvements in non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s, including but not limited to cognition, mood, sleep and pain and autonomic features as measured by MDS-NMS (non-motor rating scale for Parkinson’s). She also described how PD-ballet® is an appropriate and safe intervention that can be delivered across all motor stages of Parkinson’s.
Dr Julie Williams then presented the implementation science findings that explored why people enjoyed taking part and strategies on how PD-Ballet can be implemented successfully in the future. Like the M4M programme, she explained that shared group activity, shared lived experience, staff support and the skill of the programme delivery team we key elements and that PD-ballet® is an acceptable, feasible and appropriate creative health programme.
From the minute I got into the dance studio, the atmosphere, the fact there was live music, the way that the teachers and the volunteers helped us made the whole experience a fantastic one… Meeting other people with Parkinson’s, and developing a relationship with them, I think that was the most powerful aspect of the whole experience. - Anonymous
Before the final panel discussion, Professor Daisy Fancourt summarised the state-of-the-art in Creative Health and the importance placed upon it by the World Health Organisation (WHO). She then introduced the panel of Ellen Rule (Deputy CEO / Director of Strategy and Transformation at NHS Gloucestershire ICB), Paul Gilluley (Chief Medical Officer for NHS Northeast London), Helen Chatterjee (Professor of Human and Ecological Health at University College London), Raj Mitra (GP, Lambeth Walk Group Practice) and SHAPER lead, Carmine Pariante. The discussion focused on the ’what next’ for the SHAPR programme and creative health in general. They discussed the barriers and facilitators to integration into mainstream healthcare. They urged commissioners to be bold and invest in such programmes, and explored strategies for successful and sustainable future implementation and scale-up to reach larger numbers of people across NHS. There seemed to be a consensus that the arts are still considered ‘nice to have’ rather than an essential tool in the armoury for prevention embedded within our health service. The ‘take home’ message was that creative health impacts at physiological, psychological and behavioural levels and should be considered as an important adjunct to conventional medicine.