Foundation Grant For Creation Of Music Therapy Program

The Heather on Earth Music Foundation, founded by Geri Fessler to honor the memory of her daughter Heather, who passed away in 1985, has made a grant of $34,000 to Winthrop-University Hospital to fund the creation of a Music Therapy Program for pediatric patients.

The new Music Therapy Program will benefit children in Winthrop's Hagedorn Pediatric Inpatient Center and its Cancer Center for Kids. It will be a part of Winthrop's Child Life Program, which serves children who are treated at the hospital's Hagedorn Pediatric Inpatient Center, Pediatric Emergency Room, Cancer Center for Kids and Children's Specialty Center.

The Child Life Program helps to minimize children's fears and reduce potential anxiety during the hospital experience. Certified Child Life Specialists address the unique emotional needs of hospitalized children through supervised play, recreation, age-appropriate answers to questions, education and emotional support. The support services provided by Child Life are also beneficial to parents, who gain a better understanding of the child's hospital experience and how best to help them through it.

"Winthrop created the Child Life Program to address the emotional and developmental needs of our pediatric patients, as well as help them cope with the fear and anxiety that hospitalization can cause," said AnnMarie DiFrancesca, Director of Winthrop's Child Life Program. "The addition of a music therapy program will provide a unique alternative coping mechanism through which children may express their emotions, cope with their illness, and master their own hospital experience."

Music has long been recognized for its potential soothing effect, and in recent years has gained even greater respect as scientific research validates the clinical benefit to patients. According to Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), "music therapy is useful for addressing the physical, emotional, cognitive, and social needs of children and adults with disabilities or illnesses."

According to the American Music Therapy Association, music therapy can help reduce pain; elevate patients' moods and counteract depression; promote movement for physical rehabilitation; calm, sedate or even induce sleep; and counteract apprehension or fear.

The Heather on Earth Music Foundation was created by Mrs. Fessler to provide start-up funding for the implementation of music therapy programs in children's hospitals and to provide ongoing support to the programs. "Keeping Heather's memory alive on earth by bringing music into the hearts of children as they heal has created for me a great sense of inner peace!," said Mrs. Fessler. "It truly has given great meaning to the essence of Heather's destiny, as well as my own."

For more information about Winthrop's Child Life Program or the Hagedorn Pediatric Inpatient Center, please call Ms. DiFrancesca at (516) 663-2761. For more information about the Heather on Earth Music Foundation, call Geri Fessler at (516) 316-7726 or e-mail her at velveteyes423@aol.com.