AKRON, Ohio – Akron Children’s has received a $300,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to create a research lab dedicated to studying narrative medicine interventions with children and young adults, their parents and pediatric health professionals.

Akron Children’s was the first children’s hospital in the country with a narrative medicine program to employ full-time narrative medicine specialists and the first to receive an NEA Research Lab grant for narrative medicine. 

The grant, covering two and a half years, will establish Akron Children’s Narrative Medicine Research Lab, creating the infrastructure to allow the staff to expand upon the research activities they have been pursuing for the past seven years. 

Narrative medicine is a relatively new health care discipline that helps patients and health professionals tell and listen to unique illness stories through reading and discussion of a poem, piece of prose or visual art, followed by writing and sharing of one’s reflection.

Akron Children’s began an arts and expressive therapy program focused on the healing powers of art, music and dance in 2012 under the direction of Dr. Sarah Friebert, founder of the Haslinger Family Pediatric Palliative Care Center and the Expressive Therapy Center. Expanding upon that, Friebert invited Nicole Robinson, then at Kent State University, to offer narrative medicine services for Haslinger Center patients and staff, and she was hired in 2019 to build a program. 

The preliminary findings of research at Akron Children’s and other institutions suggest narrative medicine can help patients, especially those with chronic and complex illnesses, a news release states.

“Receiving the NEA Research Lab grant represents a pivotal milestone for narrative medicine at Akron Children’s and nationwide,” Robinson said. “It enables us to move beyond demonstrating feasibility and toward understanding health and wellness benefits for children, families and health professionals. With support from the NEA, we can help codify narrative medicine practice and interventions and equip other health systems with the framework to implement high-quality programs that support all who seek and deliver health care.”

Pictured at top: Nicole Robinson, narrative medicine program manager at Akron Children’s.