Health, Arts, Learning and Evaluation Lab

The lab is led by Girija Kaimal, EdD, and her expertise lies in the areas of health outcomes of creative self-expression, art therapy research, program evaluation, qualitative and mixed-methods research.

She is the Principal Investigator for the first qualitative study funded by the Department of Defense on Gulf War Illness. She is also the PI for the National Endowment for the Arts Research Labs cooperative agreement, examining outcomes of art therapy for in hematology/oncology settings as well as military service members with PTSD and TBI. She is PI on a series of studies that examine the health outcomes of visual self-expression arts including changes in physiological indicators (like salivary cortisol, amylase, IL10, TNF alpha), brain activation (as measured by functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy, fNIRS) as well as psychological indicators like mood, perceived stress, and, self-efficacy. These studies include healthy adults participants as well as caregivers of patients facing chronic and terminal illnesses. Most recently she is examining outcomes of virtual reality artmaking using FNIRS technology. This study is being conducted in collboration with the International Arts+Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University.

In addition, she has a portfolio of research and evaluation studies funded by the US Department of Education, National Science Foundation as well as several foundations. Her grant funding to date totals approximately $3.3 million. Kaimal also serves as a research advisor to Oxfam America and Save the Children on international projects that examine issues of disparity related to gender, and, the role of the arts in education and human development. In a recent multi-year evaluation study on leadership development funded by Lehigh University (through a grant from the U.S. Department of Education) we are examined how participation in the arts could ignite learning transfer to leadership practices. Other prior research experiences include conducting secondary analyses of qualitative data from a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) longitudinal study of depression in families; and; a multi-disciplinary study on the outcomes of genetic testing for hearing loss funded by the National Institute of Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD).

The HALE lab research team has presented and published peer-reviewed journal articles on the role of changes in neuroinflammatory markers as a result of art making, technology in art therapy practice, the psychosocial outcomes of arts participation across the life span, and using narratives in research.