The Origin Story
“Singing for Health”
“Singing for Health” was born in 2017 when chorister, and medical student at the time Isabel Hanson, and choral conductor Liz Lecoanet had a conversation after a choir rehearsal.
Liz said to Isabel that she was so angry about how people believed they “had a bad voice” or were “tone deaf”, and how she wanted to “prove in a court of law, that when you tell someone they have no voice, or an ugly voice, how this shuts us down, our body, our immune system, changes our fundamental beliefs about ourselves, effects our relationships, without us even knowing it".
Telling someone they shouldn’t sing, or have a bad voice early in life, changes the way we are in our job, our relationships, changes the trajectory of our life path . Liz, clearly passionate about the IMPORTANCE and DEPTH of our voice, and how it works; Isabel astutely responded… “well, a court of law would be difficult for now, but AT THE VERY LEAST, WE CAN BRING SINGING IN LINE WITH EXERCISE SO THAT GP’s CAN PRESCRIBE IT”; and Singing for Health was born and they have been working on it ever since.
Dr Isabel Hanson
BSc BA MBBS MSc DCH FRACGP
DPhil candidate, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Sciences, University of Oxford
Clinical Lecturer, GP Clinical School, University of Sydney
Adjunct Lecturer, International Centre for Future Health Systems,University of New South Wales
Liz Lecoanet
Musical Director, Choral Conductor, Presenter, Classical and Contemporary Singer, Singing Teacher, Hidden Hero of Sydney for her work with choirs and bridging communities, and her ability to get any room singing) nicknaming their partnership MD2 (power of the medical doctor and musical director combined), have co-presented a many medical conferences including WONCA.
Story so far
24th Australian and New Zealand Prevocational Medical Education Forum in Canberra 2019 and the Australasian Doctors Health Conference in Perth in November 2019.
Following these conferences, several hospitals and universities implemented similar wellbeing choirs for their staff based on the pilot wellbeing choir.
In December 2022, Liz’s work “The Joy Of Singing – Connecting With Colleagues During A Pandemic Through A Virtual Wellbeing Choir” was presented at the Australasian Doctors’ Health Conference in Adelaide.
In October 2023, Isabel presented the evidenced based benefits of singing to over 4000 international GPs at WONCA, and Liz got them all to experience the benefits by all singing together.
They also started the first NSW Health SINGING initiative at RPA Hospital, a Singing for Health session run weekly by Liz since 2017 (INCLUDING WEEKLY DURING COVID – online – it DIDN’T drop away, even for healthworkers who were fatigued BEFORE Covid years – this speaks in spades the power and essential nature of SINGING TOGETHER).
