FOCUS
Equitable access to arts engagement has the propensity to promote forms of social cohesion and wellbeing along with health communication and education in a less intimidating manner than traditional modalities. Further, fair and just opportunities for health require not only collaboration but true partnerships among people who co-vision, co-create, and equitably share resultant power. Alex is committed to disrupting inequitable structures that negatively impact social determinants of health while remaining aware that this requires a continuous, reiterative practice of cultural humility. Within this purview, Alex is most interested in how arts engagement, alongside community-based participatory research (CBPR) approaches, can impact adolescent mental health both at the interpersonal and community levels of the social ecological model.
MORE ABOUT ALEXANDRA
The importance of strengths-based approaches, authentically caring for one another, and creativity are central to Alex’s values. Between her personal tenets and her experiences leading national, cross-sector collaboration research among arts, government, and health sectors, she brings ingenuity and experienced perspective to her work.
DISSERTATION GRANT AWARDEE — FALL 2024
Arts and mental health policy: Cross-sectoral advocacy for sustainable practices in the United States
Leveraging the arts for mental health has been substantiated by organizations like the World Health Organization, as it pertains to psychological and physiological factors at the individual level, as well as community-level factors such as fostering social connections, tailoring health communication, and reducing mental health stigma. A recent review considering arts and public health policy found that arts and mental health strategies are being implemented internationally through arts and culture policies, health policies, and cross-governmental policies. This dissertational work seeks to (1) provide a comprehensive understanding of priorities and strategies currently employed in public health policies that seek to engage the arts to address mental health in the United States, (2) explore conceptions of arts in mental health advocacy amongst arts and mental health practitioners, and (3) investigate the efficacy of implementing a course on arts in mental health advocacy for stakeholders engaged in arts in mental health practice.
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE HPRS DISSERTATION AWARDS, CLICK HERE.
