Effects of “Thursdays at the Museum” at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts on the mental and physical health of older community dwellers: the art-health randomized clinical trial protocol

Abstract

Background: Recently, we demonstrated that the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' (MMFA) participatory art-based activity, known as "Thursdays at the Museum," improved the well-being, quality of life, and physical health (i.e., frailty) of older community dwellers by using a pre-post intervention, single arm, prospective and longitudinal experimental design. The present randomized clinical trial (RCT), known as the Art-Health RCT (A-Health RCT), aims to compare changes in well-being, quality of life, frailty, and physiological measures in older community dwellers who participate in "Thursdays at the Museum" (intervention group) and in their counterparts who do not participate in this art-based activity (control group). Methods/design: The current unicenter, randomized, clinical, controlled, comparative trial recruits 150 older community dwellers to two parallel arms (75 participants in the intervention group and 75 participants in the control group). The intervention is a 3-month cycle of weekly "Thursdays at the Museum," which are structured 2-h-long art-based workshops performed in a group setting at the MMFA. The control group is composed of participants who do not take part in artbased activities, receive their usual health and/or social services, and commit to report any other activity practiced during the same time. Assessments of the primary outcome (well-being) and the secondary outcomes (quality of life, frailty, and physiological measures including heart rate, daily step count, sleep duration, and its phases) are performed on six occasions: at baseline, at the beginning of the second and third months, at the end of the third month, as well as 6 and 12 months after the last workshop. Statistical analyses are performed with the intention to treat and per protocol. Comparisons of changes in outcome measures between intervention and control groups use repeated measures tests.

COVID-19 lockdowns’ effects on the quality of life, perceived health and well-being of healthy elderly individuals: A longitudinal comparison of pre-lockdown and lockdown states of well-being

“…The survey was only made available if the individual consented to participate in the study. The electronic survey, called the CESAM ( Beauchet et al, 2020b ) took an average of 15 minutes to complete and was self-administered.…”

Intrinsic Capacities, Functional Ability, Physiological Systems, and Caregiver Support: A Targeted Synthesis of Effective Interventions and International Recommendations for Older Adults

“…However, it also entails a limitation in that interventions without a robust research background were likely to have been omitted. For example, the use of animals, whether as part of formal therapy or as simple company [97,98], or cultural engagement [99][100][101][102], such as visiting museums, has been linked to benefits in a number of intrinsic capacities. Moreover, the choice to be pragmatic in the identification of included research meant that there was a lack of systematic searching of databases, giving rise to the possibility that other relevant studies were not captured.…”

Museums and the Aging Brain

“…(2019) identifies qualitative and quantitative measures that can be used for studying cognitive enhancement interventions. An investigation of the effects a Montreal Museum of Fine Arts program on older adults (Beauchet et al., 2020) illustrates the use of a randomized clinical trial in a museum setting.…”