Meaningful yet complex: navigating cross-sectoral collaboration in arts-based health promotion

Background

WHO highlights the promising role of arts and culture in health promotion and prevention. A cross-sector partnership in Central Denmark Region developed a group-based singing intervention to support women at increased risk of postpartum depression. Running the intervention requires ongoing collaboration between regional hospitals (recruitment) and municipal music and arts schools (delivery). This study examines what motivates such cross-sectoral collaboration and how it is experienced by the professionals involved in this intervention.

Methods

A qualitative study was conducted using semi-structured interviews with 14 stakeholders, including regional decision-makers, midwives from regional hospitals, and singing teachers, leaders and project coordinators from municipal music and arts schools. Data were collected in 2025 and 2026 and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.

Results

Preliminary analysis identifies two main themes: (1) Shared motivation and situated interests. Strong motivation and high perceived value were prominent across actors. These operated at two levels: (a) a shared cross-sectoral ambition to support women, and (b) individual motivations shaped by professional roles, responsibilities, and local contexts. (2) Recurring tensions in collaboration. Differences in professionals’ roles, priorities, and organisational contexts caused repeated and unresolved tensions due to uncertainty about who the intervention is for, how it should be delivered across sectors, and who benefits from it.

Conclusions

Across professions and sectors, professionals were highly motivated by the arts-based intervention, but this study highlights the challenges of bringing together actors from fundamentally different organisational contexts and ways of working. Shared responsibility, sustained organisational, managerial, and financial support are needed to integrate such interventions into routine practice, alongside further research on how this can be achieved.

Key messages

• Cross-sectoral arts-based interventions are widely valued and generate strong motivation. But tensions emerge in practice due to differences in organisational contexts and ways of working.

• Cross-sectoral collaboration depends on alignment between actors and requires shared responsibility and organisational, managerial and financial support for integration into routine practice.