Our Framework: The Total Musician Healthᵀᴹ Model

The Total Musician Healthᵀᴹ Model is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary framework designed to guide advances in education, research, clinical care, and policy. Introduced during the First Global Summit on Occupational Health in Music, this model integrates:

  • Biopsychosocial Perspectives
    Considers music-specific occupational health as shaped by the complex interaction of physical, psychological, and social factors. This model goes beyond treating symptoms and promotes a holistic understanding of how physical, auditory, and mental stress, as well as factors such as perfectionism and peer dynamics, combine to influence health outcomes.

  • Total Worker Health®
    Focusing on health, safety, and well-being through organizational and cultural factors—such as leadership practices, institutional policies, workload expectations, power dynamics, and learning environments—rather than only on individual behavior or injuries.

  • Developmental Science
    Recognizing that health risks, protections, and responsibilities change throughout the lifespan of those involved with music.

What the Framework Promotes

  • A culture of safety, inclusion, and lifelong well-being in music education and professional practice.

  • Shared language, skills, and expectations across music, healthcare, and policy sectors.

  • Evidence-informed educational and clinical training pathways designed to address music-specific occupational health concerns.

  • A redefinition of excellence in music that prioritizes health and well-being along with artistic achievement.

From Vision to Practice

The Total Musician Healthᵀᴹ Model reflects the Summit’s call for systemic change—connecting research to practice, education to professional responsibility, and global vision to local action. By addressing cultural and organizational factors that affect health, along with individual risks, the model encourages coordinated efforts across institutions, disciplines, and regions to promote healthier, more sustainable futures for everyone involved with music and its creators.

Features and Applications

  • Encourages music schools, arts organizations, and educators to formally adopt the Total Musician Healthᵀᴹ Model as a foundation for curriculum, policy, and institutional culture.

  • Supports integration of occupational health education into required coursework at all levels.

  • Calls for music faculty and leaders to receive training in occupational health principles to promote a culture of care and shared responsibility.

  • Promotes interdisciplinary partnerships.

Paradigm Shift

The Total Musician Healthᵀᴹ Model represents a shift from a tradition of reactive and fragmented interventions (or silence and stoicism) to a culture of knowledge, care, and sustainability in music. It provides an overdue roadmap for structuring learning environments that combine artistic excellence with real, evidence-based responses to music-specific occupational health concerns.

Schools, conservatories, and organizations embracing the Total Musician Healthᵀᴹ Model position themselves as leaders, building thriving and sustainable communities in the evolving world of music.