Carolyn Phillips

Biography

Dr. Carolyn Phillips is a nurse scientist, educator, and musician whose work integrates expressive arts, music-based interventions, and healthcare research to enhance emotional communication, resilience, and well-being among patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals. With over two decades of experience as an oncology nurse and nurse practitioner, as well as advanced postdoctoral training at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School, she has distinguished herself as an expert in applying innovative research methods to develop and evaluate arts-based interventions.

Dr. Phillips brings a deep understanding of the emotional and relational dimensions of healthcare into her research and teaching. Her pioneering work at the intersection of arts and health is reshaping how psychosocial interventions are designed and delivered in clinical and community settings. Her research portfolio is marked by the integration of music and storytelling into therapeutic strategies. Dr. Phillips has designed and tested music-based interventions that harness the transformative power of the arts to address a range of health challenges. Notably, she has developed and evaluated the Storytelling Through Music interventions, tailored specifically for diverse populations, including bereaved parents coping with the loss of a child to cancer and healthcare professionals who face the emotional toll of high-stress clinical environments. Additionally, she leads projects such as the Music-4-MS Optimization Study, which explores a 12-week music-based cognitive rehabilitation intervention aimed at enhancing cognitive outcomes for individuals with multiple sclerosis.

Dr. Phillips’s work, published in leading nursing and healthcare journals, underscores her commitment to enhancing the well-being of individuals dealing with chronic illness, loss, and the stresses of caregiving, as well as advancing arts-based approaches as catalysts for healing, resilience, and transformative change in healthcare.