Impact Report 2025-2026

One year on. What we have done. What’s next?

We launched BEAT-SCD in September 2025 with one question: What role can music play in the lives of people with sickle cell disease (SCD)? We wanted to know whether music can ease pain, and whether it can contribute to changing the public narrative about SCD. Research in music therapy and health promotion suggests music is an accessible intervention that can help improve clinical care and health education. The evidence exists. What is missing is how to deliver them in real-world settings: what is feasible? What is acceptable? And what appeals to patients, clinicians, public health practitioners, and the general public?

In our first year, we completed a systematic review of music-based interventions for SCD. Although there is extensive literature providing evidence of how music therapy supports cancer patients and other diseases characterized by chronic pain, fewer than eight studies have explored the benefits of music therapy for SCD. All of them were conducted in US medical settings, none were conducted in low and middle income settings, including countries in Africa, where close to 500,000 babies are born with SCD every year. We also ran a global survey of SCD stigma, mental health, and receptivity to music-based communication, which provided us with a better understanding of acceptability of music-based health promotion interventions for this population.

The results of our systematic review will be presented at the American Public Health Association (APHA) annual meeting in November 2026, and we just wrapped up a SCD symposium exploring the role of music, mental health and nutrition as a holistic approach to support people living with SCD, in collaboration with NYU School of Global Public Health, the ISEE Lab, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, NYU Langone's Institute for Excellence in Health Equity, and Cornell's Center for Nutrition Resilience and Community Health. 

While remarkable scientific advances -like gene therapies- continue to transform the treatment landscape for SCD, optimal health is shaped by factors that prescriptions alone cannot address. Our goal with the symposium -and BEAT SCD- is to ultimately contribute to  greater public attention, advocacy and investment in SCD research. 

Building on our collaboration with the Adekunle Gold Foundation, we are developing proposals for a pilot study in the U.S. and West Africa to test whether music-based social media campaigns can reduce stigma and encourage people living with SCD to access mental health support. If you would like to collaborate, support or follow the work, please contact us.

Message from Dr. Carlos Chirinos