4 of 5 Theme 4 - Segment 3: Research presented by Ram Ramachandran and Thomas Garrison
This video describes how Johns Hopkins’s Occupational Health in Music, JHU Peabody, JHU Whiting School of Engineering, and JHU School of Medicine are building a joint research program on musicians’ health, including a shared lab to study hearing, earplugs, and musculoskeletal load using advanced acoustic and motion‑capture methods. Ram Ramachandran outlines the need for extensive, long‑term cohort studies and national registries on musicians comparable to those for firefighters and miners, arguing that such infrastructure is both feasible and overdue. Thomas Garrison details an interdisciplinary project to develop custom‑tuned musician earplugs and uses engineering’s ethical codes and the “hierarchy of controls” to argue that music education should adopt similarly enforceable standards that prioritize systemic exposure reduction over relying solely on personal protective equipment.