"Vienna-based SPARC, a nonprofit that provides day programs for Northern Virginia adults with severe and multiple disabilities, along with the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences have received a $500,000 grant from National Institutes of Health.
The grant will help the organizations develop generative artificial intelligence-empowered therapeutic art tools for people with severe and multiple disabilities, according to a news release from SPARC.
“Creative arts interventions, such as painting, sculpturing, and music composition, are effective for both stress management and prevention,” SPARC Executive Director Debi Alexander said in the release. “The creative process, however, is challenging, even impossible due to physical constraints experienced by individuals with severe and multiple disabilities."
In 2023, the National Institutes of Health designated people with disabilities as a population with health disparities, recognizing barriers and unmet needs faced by this population. The primary goal of the ArtAI project is to enhance the mental and behavioral health of people with severe disabilities through customized creative art AI applications designed in collaboration with community partners.
The project will be piloted at six SPARC locations in Virginia and through a mobile immersive learning center.
The “AI-empowered Art Therapy” project is a collaboration between SPARC, George Washington University and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore School of Pharmacy and Health Professions. The $500,000 grant, which started in October, is funded by the Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Consortium to Advance Health Equity and Researcher Diversity and the National Institutes of Health. Preliminary data will be collected on satisfaction and tools trustworthiness from participants, caregivers and health care professionals. A plan will then be developed to scale up the effort for a formal, ethical AI-driven clinical trial with reduced life stress and associated anxiety and depression as the target outcomes, according to the release.
SPARC programming serves young adults who have aged out of the special education support provided by the K-12 system and are not eligible for other community-based programs that serve individuals with severe and multiple disabilities.
Launched nearly 20 years ago, SPARC hosts centers that operate five days a week at various county locations in Fairfax and Arlington with staff-led programming. The programming is rooted in therapeutic recreation principles that consist of continued education/leisure learning, skill building, exercise, excursions, cooking, music, art, lectures and discussion groups."