A Research-Driven Field With a Global Agenda

Occupational Health in Music (OHM) is a research-driven field dedicated to understanding and addressing the unique physical, psychological, and socio-cultural occupational health challenges faced by all who engage with music. It recognizes music as an occupation with distinct, preventable, and music-specific occupational health risks—and affirms the principle that:

Every educated musician must be aware, knowledgeable, and competent in managing music-specific occupational health concerns—for themselves and for those they serve.

The Challenge: Engaging with music involves music-specific occupational risks.

Learning, performing, teaching, creating, consuming, and even applying music for health benefits involve music-specific occupational health risks, including physical, vocal, hearing, and mental health concerns.

The Problem

Individuals engaged in music, from beginners to seasoned professionals, remain an understudied, underserved, and under-resourced occupational group.

Core Gaps

• Occupational health is not treated as a core principle in the music discipline, its educational pathways, or its professional culture.

• Music education often fails to prepare students to recognize, prevent, and manage music-specific occupational health risks.

• Clinicians interested in addressing music-specific occupational health problems lack access to competency-based training in this area.

Factors That Intensify These Gaps

• The absence of formal recognition of music as an occupation within national occupational health frameworks.

• A lack of role-based professional standards, accreditation requirements, and training pathways for faculty and leadership working in tertiary music institutions.

• Limited formal training programs for clinicians interested in treating music-specific occupational health problems.

• A variety of global infrastructures that do not yet benefit from shared standards, competencies, or guidelines across education, healthcare, and policy.

Why This Matters

Together, these gaps underscore the need for systemic reform across music education, healthcare, and policymaking to ensure that occupational health is recognized as integral to artistry, learning, professional responsibility, and the long-term sustainability of the music discipline.

The Opportunity

Transforming Practice Through Convergence, Education, Research, Technology, and Advocacy

Aligned with the principles established at the First Global Summit on Occupational Health in Music, this initiative advances a transdisciplinary approach that brings together music, occupational health, medicine, engineering, public health, and the social and behavioral sciences to drive meaningful change.

Strategic Opportunities

• Transdisciplinary Convergence
  Integrating perspectives across music, health, engineering, and the sciences to address occupational risks as systemic and preventable—not inevitable.

• Technology & Engineering Innovation
  Applying measurement science, data analytics, and engineering solutions to better understand, visualize, and mitigate music-related occupational health risks.

• Curriculum Reform
  Embedding occupational health literacy, prevention, and ethical responsibility into tertiary music education and professional training.

• Workforce Development
  Creating competency-based pathways for educators, clinicians, and leaders working with music-exposed populations.

• Global Collaboration
  Building shared standards, competencies, and infrastructures that connect institutions, disciplines, and regions worldwide.

Why This Opportunity Matters

Together, these strategies advance research, education, and policy to make safe, sustainable, and healthy engagement with music the norm—not the exception. This shift requires integrating insights from music, medicine, engineering, and public health, rather than treating music-related occupational health concerns as isolated, unavoidable, or solely individual problems.

Johns Hopkins Leadership

Johns Hopkins University is uniquely positioned to lead this global transformation through multi-divisional collaboration among:

• Peabody Institute

• Johns Hopkins Medicine

• Bloomberg School of Public Health

• Whiting School of Engineering

• Carey Business School

• Johns Hopkins School of Nursing

Together, these divisions are building the evidence base, tools, competencies, and infrastructures needed to address music-specific occupational health challenges at scale.