Get Down And Dance With $2M In Government Grants!

Eric Scheiner | June 14, 2019
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The government is spending over $2 million in dance related research in 2019, from Hula to African dance.

Among the projects receiving funding is a Hula intervention program. The University of Hawaii at Manoa is conducting a 6-month Hula intervention study, that’s receiving $825,396 in taxpayer money from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute this year.

According to the project's information page:

This project is a community-engaged, randomized control trial of hula, the indigenous dance form of Native Hawaiians (NH), among 250 NHs with hypertension living in Hawai`i and Washington State. We will compare the effects of a 6-month intervention, called the Kā-HOLO Program, delivered by trained peer educators to a wait-list control condition on blood pressure and 10-year cardiovascular risk. The intervention will be comprised of hula plus hypertension self-care education program. We will also examine the mediating effects of health behaviors, self-regulation, psychosocial, and socio-cultural factors on blood pressure reduction. Our ultimate goal is to develop and test a culturally-appropriate, acceptable, and effective intervention that can be delivered and sustained in community settings.

The University of Pittsburgh is getting $698,092 of taxpayer funds from The National Institute on Aging to examine the effects of African dance and education on seniors.

“We propose a randomized intervention where 180 older African Americans are assigned to either a moderate intensity African dance group 3 days per week,” according to project’s information page.

In this randomized clinical trial, we will examine the effects of African dance and Africana Education on cognitive and brain function in older African Americans. We will be collecting a battery of cognitive, neuroimaging, psychosocial, physical function measures, and blood-based biomarkers to examine the outcomes and mechanisms of the intervention.

The “Drug Use Among Nightclub And Dance Festival Attendees In New York City” study at The New York University School of Medicine is receiving $496,223 of taxpayers funds for 2019 through The National Institute on Drug Abuse.

“This study will examine the prevalence of drug use, risk factors for use, and self-reported adverse outcomes associated with use, among nightclub and dance festival attendees,” the study's description says.

Adverse outcomes of using drugs at a dance festival? The findings of the study should be quite revealing.

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