RESEARCH COMPONENT

1. Multi-Year Rx Laughter Research Project: (Years 2000-2002)
This multi year Research project was a successful collaboration between Rx Laughter & The Mattel Children's Hospital @UCLA, The UCLA Neuropsychiatric Research Institute & Hospital and The UCLA Jonsson Cancer Center. The study took place from 2000 to 2002 in the UCLA Pediatric Pain Program laboratory within the UCLA Department of Pediatrics.

Seed funding for this Rx Laughter study was graciously donated by Comedy Central, a Division of Viacom Inc.

This Research collaboration focused on the use of individualized humorous viewing for pediatric patients (ages 7-18). It has led to some intriguing, early discoveries which suggested that a child or teen who was undergoing a painful medical procedure could deal with the pain of that medical procedure significantly better while laughing at the comedy shows during their private, individual procedure. The procedure went by faster for them, they were less afraid and less stressed.

Physiological measurements (cortisol, salivary, heart rate) of each participant were taken before, during & after watching the videos for accurate assessments. Each participant watched the video privately, much as they would do in their outpatient treatments for chemotherapy or other outpatient procedures.

The Medical Team of this Rx Laughter study was headed by Margaret Stuber MD of the UCLA Jonsson Cancer Center & Professor of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute & Hospital. The Co Principal Investigator of this study was Lonnie Zeltzer MD, Founder and Director of the UCLA Pediatric Pain Program at the Department of Pediatrics at the Mattel Children's Hospital @UCLA. Dr. Zeltzer is a renowned expert in the field of pain management for seriously ill pediatric patients & pain management for Adult survivors of childhood cancer.

The Founder of Rx Laughter, Sherry Dunay Hilber developed the humor intervention (choosing, screening & showing the videos to the participants on-site) while closely collaborating with the Medical Team in the design, development & oversight of this
multi year project through its completion. 

For details of this multi year Research collaboration, please see the February 2002 American Medical Association worldwide briefing Presented by Margaret Stuber MD regarding the details of this study and the innovative & practical ways that Rx Laughter can integrate these findings into medical uses for patients everywhere

2. Putting Our Findings into Practical Use for Patients:
Rx Laughter has taken those intriguing findings and put them into practical on-site use for patients. This is what defines Rx Laughter: We use our and other research findings to implement the best therapeutic entertainment program anywhere. Further, when we do design a Research project in collaboration with medical teams, our utmost goal is how this can actually be used by the patient, family & medical care team in the best way possible.

We continue our long association with the David Geffen UCLA School of Medicine as we develop & implement our Therapeutic Entertainment programs based upon our multi year Research collaboration. 

For more information about our collaborations with medical teams to implement therapeutic entertainment viewing into health care settings in personalized ways for patients of all ages, please see our "Therapeutic Entertainment" page on this site.

3. Future Rx Laughter Research:
Our hypothesis at Rx Laughter is that video entertainment of certain kinds can reduce some of the problems of chemotherapy such as feeling nauseous, having less of a desire to eat between the sessions, being afraid of the pain during the treatment itself. We hope to learn more about this in the next year.

Further, There has been some interesting research done by Alan Reiss MD of Stanford U (not with Rx Laughter) showing interesting changes in brain activity while volunteers laughed at newspaper cartoons (written, not video). . We hope to someday find out how entertainment whether it be via the Internet or a television set, can change brain activity during med treatments in a way that can help the patient in measurable, critical ways. Wouldn't that be wonderful? 

4. The "Tipping Point" for Positive Psychology Research:
In the past few years since Rx Laughter began, new studies have emerged at various highly regarded institutions such as Stanford, Duke, and several others which cite some increasingly exciting findings about how humor can be a serious (no pun intended!) part of health care for patients in distress. 

We like to think that Rx Laughter has helped to increase the growing interest in & the credibility of what has traditionally been a very slow-growing area of research the connection between humor & health and how to actually implement it into the medical process for patients who are undergoing serious treatments.

Regardless of the extent of our role in this growing field of interest by medical & academic institutes, there is definitely a "tipping point" in this field and we are deeply proud to be a part of it and to be associated with such renowned institutes as the David Geffen UCLA School of Medicine and others.

For a compilation of all significant publishings on the role of humor & health, you can order a copy of our comprehensive Summary Report for a fee. Please feel free to contact us at our email address which is RxLproject@aol.com with your request.

5. Our Promise to Patients:
As Research continues-- whether through the work of Rx Laughter or through other entities without Rx Laughter -- we promise to carefully review such Research findings without bias, and thoughtfully implement those findings that seem worthy of implementation into our Therapeutic Entertainment projects. We believe that this perspective is unique to Rx Laughter.

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