Jun 10 2008
Employment/PR Update PDF Print E-mail
Written by Amy Hemenway   
Tuesday, 10 June 2008
The Employment and Public Relations Committee convened twice during the most recent music therapy conference in Louisville, KY.  This committee has been given several charges:  To maintain accuracy of materials generated, to support regional networks, to identify and monitor trends of employment, and to identify career information for prospective music therapy students. 

It was brought to our attention that several online career databases have little to no information on music therapy.  We, as a committee, crafted a letter to be sent to webmasters who maintain some of these career databases, encouraging them to include music therapy as a career on their websites.  We included the AMTA definition of music therapy and also asked them to link the AMTA website to their databases. 

This committee also discussed ideas on how to launch a “National Music Therapy Awareness Day, Week, or Month.” We will contact other allied healthcare related associations (i.e. – Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, etc.) to find out how they became involved in this process.  This will require support from AMTA and possibly the U.S. congress in order to move forward with establishing national recognition for the music therapy profession.

Developing ways to track trends and growth within the music therapy field was also a topic of discussion.  Our committee designed a survey to distribute to AMTA members on growth and trends across the country.  This survey awaits approval from AMTA before it can be disturbed among the membership. 

There are no current updates on any business regarding the Employment and Public Relations Committee, as per my discussion with our national representative, during this 3rd week of January.  If anyone has any questions, concerns or ideas to contribute, please contact me via e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it