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AAHPM Abstract Award Winner
AAHPM Abstract Award Winner
HPNA Abstract Award Winner
HPNA Abstract Award Winner
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Registration Required
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AAHPM Abstract Award Winner
AAHPM Abstract Award Winner
HPNA Abstract Award Winner
HPNA Abstract Award Winner

Carol J. Spears, MS, CMP (she/her/hers)

Chief Executive Officer
Music For Healing & Transition Program (www.mhtp.org)

Carol Spears, MS, CMP, has worked as a Certified Music Practitioner (CMP)® primarily in hospice settings providing live therapeutic music to support patients, family members and clinicians. Since 2020 she has served as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Music for Healing and Transition Program™ (MHTP), overseeing the training program and curriculum, overall operational management, and development. MHTP, a 32-year old nonprofit, trains and certifies musicians to provide live therapeutic music in a variety of healthcare facilities.

She works with the Board of Directors to set long-term strategic goals to continue the standards of providing education based in the most current research about the effects of therapeutic music on patients’ wellbeing. Carol facilitates partnerships with universities and other nonprofits to support the training of performance musicians to learn the art and science to become therapeutic musicians in healthcare. She also is one of the Faculty for MHTP’s Module Three and a former Board Director and President.

As a Board Member and current Vice Chair of the National Standards Board for Therapeutic Musicians, she works collaboratively with the American Music Therapy Association and other therapeutic music training programs to educate others about, and enhance the field of, live therapeutic music.

Carol’s MS is in Wildlife Biology, and she taught biology at the university level. Prior to being a therapeutic musician Carol worked for 28 years as an educator, researcher, public information officer and manager for the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service (NPS), including Superintendent of several national park sites. During her own training as a CMP in 2001, she found the science behind the “superpower” of music as a therapeutic tool so astonishingly transformative, that she left her dream job in the NPS to dedicate herself to serving the ill and dying with music.

Presentation(s):

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