Saharra Dixon Receives Renée Fleming NeuroArts Investigator Award
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Community health education doctoral candidate Saharra Dixon is co-Principal Investigator on 1 of 10 teams of artists and early career researchers named 2026 Renée Fleming Neuroarts Investigator Awards recipients.
Each team will receive a grant of $25,000 to support an interdisciplinary research project whose results will contribute to the growing body of scientific evidence underpinning the field of neuroarts. The awards program, established by the Renée Fleming Foundation in 2024, is administered through the NeuroArts Blueprint Initiative, a partnership between Johns Hopkins University and the Aspen Institute.
Neuroarts is an interdisciplinary field, rooted in the science of neuroaesthetics and ways of knowing, which explores how the arts and aesthetic experiences change the brain, body, and behavior and how this knowledge can be applied to advance individual and community health and well-being as well as other aspects of society. Unique in its interdisciplinary approach, the Renée Fleming Neuroarts Investigator Awards program is designed to help build the field of neuroarts by:
- providing seed funding for arts practitioners and early career researchers to collaborate on innovative neuroarts research;
- identifying and filling key gaps in neuroarts research;
- encouraging, developing, and supporting a new generation of neuroarts professionals.
Dixon, who has defended her dissertation and will graduate in May 2026, will partner with Zoe Smith, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Denver. Dixon is an arts in health practitioner and public health storyteller whose work advances understandings of the biopsychosocial mechanisms linking structural violence to stress embodiment, neurological patterns in habit formation, and health behaviors through a neuroarts praxis. Her dissertation employed a mixed-methods approach to understanding Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors among Black women using digital storytelling.
The team’s project, titled “Evaluating Theatre and Storytelling as a Neuroarts-Informed Health Coaching Intervention for Young Adults Living with Obsessive-Compulsive Related Disorders (OCRDs) and Complex Trauma,” will examine how arts-based, communal practices influence mental health outcomes among adults with Obsessive-Compulsive Related Disorders like BFRBs and body dysmorphic disoder. Moving beyond linear models of symptom reduction, the study centers healing as an embodied, relational process, emphasizing affect regulation, social connection, meaning-making, and agency. The primary objective is to evaluate the impact of a neuroarts intervention on affect, connectedness, symptom severity, support-seeking behaviors, and to identify underlying mechanisms of change, including emotional expression, communal resonance, and narrative reframing.
Using a mixed-methods, participatory action research design, participants will engage in a Praxis of Care that integrates health coaching with storytelling-based activities. Pre- and post-intervention surveys will assess symptoms, trauma, emotion regulation, and social connectedness. Qualitative data, including observations, semi-structured interviews, and creative artifacts, will contextualize outcomes and elucidate intervention mechanisms. This study advances culturally responsive, arts-based approaches to behavioral health care for marginalized populations.