Poster Presentations / Online Posters
BSN Graduate Mentorship
Poster Session Ariel Wright, Lanette Stuckey
Low first-time pass rates of NCLEX-RN® has been a concern for nursing schools, nurse educators, and nursing students. Additionally, struggling with NCLEX® pass rates can lead to communication and trust issues between nurse educators and students. This is why providing support for students post-graduation is crucial. Research focusing on nursing students from the time of graduation till they take the NCLEX® is limited. Furthermore, this gap in time can be a vulnerable transition for future nurses due to the lack of resources post-graduation. To assist with increasing NCLEX® pass rates and solidify trust with students, an innovate approach to mentoring BSN graduates while preparing for NCLEX® has been developed. A formal program has been created that involves communicating, supporting, mentoring, and tutoring BSN students after graduation while they prepare to take the NCLEX®. Through the mentorship program, nurse educators have focused on enhancing self-esteem, decreasing anxiety and stress while focusing on strengths, learning styles, and individual areas requiring further development, and implementing remediation plans. Through a mixed-method survey students are polled about the amount of support given, NCLEX® focused content, nurse educators advocating for students, motivation, inspiration, assistance through the post-graduation process, and if the student would recommend the mentorship program. Incorporating the value of lifelong learning and encouraging student empowerment through a specialized nurse educator driven mentorship has increased first-time NCLEX® pass rates. Implementation and continuation of a mentorship post-graduation should be utilized to support future nurses entering into the profession.
Promoting Health, Wellness and Fitness for Children and Adolescents with Disabilities: Creating Community Partnerships and Programs
Online Poster Shawn Rundell
Children with disabilities are often more sedentary, involved in fewer social activities, and move less compared to age-matched peers. Additionally, they often are at higher risk for other health conditions, which can contribute to a more inactive lifestyle and overall less socialization. Specialized and adaptive community-based fitness programs for children with disabilities exist but are scarce, and they are often limited by accessible space, transportation, cost, and training of community staff to work safely with children with disabilities. Physical therapists have the expertise to advise and collaborate with children with disabilities, their families, schools, community members and local organizations on how to adapt, modify or create individualized programs to promote fitness, health and wellness. Community organizations have the expertise to develop camp programs, hire staff and provide scholarship opportunities for children to participate but are often lacking training on how to work with children with disabilities or inclusive ideas on ways to promote fitness into their camps. The purpose of this poster is to describe a successful collaboration between an academic physical therapy program and a local community organization to create an inclusive, community-based fitness class for children & adolescents with disabilities.
An Exploration into the Health Literacy of Pre-service Teachers
Online Poster Jon Aoki
The K-12 education system is a means that may help offset the rise in obesity and the related metabolic syndrome diseases. Within a classroom setting, teachers have the opportunity to initiate and facilitate life-long healthy lifestyle habits in students. To meet this objective, teachers must ensure student acquisition of content knowledge and promote healthy lifestyle attitudes. This study surveyed: pre-service teachers’ perception of health; pre-service teachers’ behaviors towards healthy lifestyle habits; and, pre-service teachers’ perception of their participation in healthy lifestyle habits.
Habitual Physical Activity and Cardiovascular Responses to an Ecological Stressor
Poster Session Richard May, Tammy Hoffman, Walker Andrews
This study tested relationships between habitual physical activity and cardiovascular reactivity in a group of 58 younger adults (40 females) enrolled in an Anatomy and Physiology course. Baseline cardiovascular measures (heart rate and blood pressure) were collected during a regularly scheduled laboratory section. Cardiovascular measures were collected again the following week immediately prior to the laboratory exam. For regression analyses, blood pressure and heart rate reactivities were calculated as residualized change between baseline and exam day. Physical activity in the week prior to the exam was assessed through self-report. Exam stress elicited significant increases in state anxiety and in all cardiovascular measures (one-sample t-test, p<.01 for all tests). For the total sample, multiple regression analysis revealed that estimated minutes walking during the previous week significantly predicted smaller increment in heart rate (p<.05). For males only, reported minutes engaged in vigorous physical activity predicted a smaller increase in systolic blood pressure (p<.05). These results suggest that certain types of regular physical activity may reduce effects of daily stressors on cardiovascular reactivity.
Hand-written Journals to Support Positive Behavior Change among University Students
Poster Session Elbina Rafizadeh, Arnab Mukherjea, Stephen Morewitz
The Health Maintenance Consortium held in 2010, theorized that mechanisms of behavior change are influenced by knowledge or cognition, self-efficacy or intrinsic motivation, behavior skill building, and social reinforcement. Expressive hand-writing journaling helps students recognize negative thoughts and behaviors that affect the six dimensions of health: physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, social, and occupational. Hand-writing, an executive action, correlates with pre-frontal cognitive function, which is responsible for decision-making and critical thinking. We implemented an expressive hand-written journaling assignment in a health elective course, hypothesizing that it could help students to improve self-awareness, ability to manage negative health behavior and, self-confidence and self-efficacy. Seventy-five students, ages 18-33 years old, were randomly assigned to two groups, a journaling group (J) and non-journaling group (NJ). The final questionnaire responses showed that both groups successfully tracked their ability to manage negative health behaviors. However, students from the J group described details about increased self-awareness and behavior change awareness (60%), feelings of self-efficacy and self-confidence (14%), emotional and mental relief (26%), and one student described feeling more committed to deciding about a behavior choice. In the NJ group, 42% depended on some form of social support; 52% used other methods, such as a phone app or calendar. Hand-written journals may help students to express a deeper awareness and knowledge of their behaviors, including self-efficacy and self-confidence. However, there is also a need for a follow-up study to determine if the students from both groups have sustained their behavior.
Kindness as an Intervention for Student Social Interaction Anxiety, Affect, and Mood: The KISS of Kindness Study
Poster Session Jennifer D. Irwin, Katie J. Shillington, Tara Mantler, Andrew M. Johnson
Objectives: This study assessed the impact of engaging in acts of kindness on the affect, social interaction anxiety, and mood of undergraduate students. Participants: This randomized controlled trial involved 69 full-time undergraduate students allocated to either the intervention (kindness + stress booklet; n =35) or comparator (stress booklet; n =34) condition. Methods: The Brief Mood Introspection Scale, the International Positive and Negative Affect Schedule-Short Form, and the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale-Straightforward were administered at pre- and immediate post-intervention. Inductive content analysis was performed on open-ended questions exploring participants’ experiences with the study. Results: No statistically significant results were found. Inductive content analysis revealed several themes highlighting an improvement in the wellbeing of those in the intervention group. Conclusions: This study was a positive experience for all participants and demonstrated promise for a larger-scale university-based intervention.
Six-minute Walk Test and Dual Task Balance Test for Distinguishing Falls in People with Schizophrenia
Poster Session Wan Ju Huang, Ming De Chen, Han Yi Hsiao, Ling Ying Wang, Chou Fang Lee
The study was aimed to examine whether the 6-minute walk test and the dual task balance tests can distinguish falls in people with schizophrenia. This study employed the case-control research design. The case group was the individuals who had falls history during 2017/01/01-2018/12/12 before assessment according to the medical records. The control group was recruited from our non-acute ward residents and had no falls history during the same period. The control group was matched based on age(±5 years old ), gender, and the ward of the case group. In the end, we recruited 40 participants for the case group and 88 for the control group. People with schizophrenia in case group (fallers) had a poor performance in single leg stance test with a manual dual task (SLSman). It was found that SLSman was the only significant discriminant with the stepwise Logistic regression analysis, OR (odds ratio) was 0.937 (95% CI, 0.898-0.978). In other words, for every 1 second reduction in SLSman performance, the odds of falling will increase by 6.3% (95% CI, 2.2% - 10.2%). The overall model explained 14.4% (Nagelkerke R2=.144). For the case group, Pearson Correlation's results showed that the number of falls was significantly negatively correlated with lower limb muscle strength (30-second sit-stand test) and cognitive function (MOCA) score. The SLSman is a valid assessment to distinguish falls in people with schizophrenia.
Medical-legal Partnerships Benefit Families of Developmentally Disabled Children: Health Law Partnership and Children with Neuro-developmental Disabilities
Poster Session Salathiel Kendrick Allwood, Susan Mc Laren
This is a descriptive analysis of a retrospective cohort of families that examines the health harming legal issues of 651 patients with 1071 parent reported neurodevelopmental disabilities addressed from January 1, 2006 - June 30, 2018. 47% of children served experienced developmental delays, 29% had ADHD, 23% had Autism, and 14% were premature at birth. Of these children, 63% were male and 34% were ages 5-10 years. Families referred to Health Law Partnership (HeLP) received a legal check-up to assess legal needs and financial eligibility. Legal cases were assigned to a team of lawyers and law students through Atlanta Legal Aid and Georgia State University College of Law and physicians and medical students from Emory University and Morehouse Schools of Medicine. Among 457 cases represented the most common were SSI (189; 21%) education (225; 25.1%), and family law (166; 18.5%). Benefits obtained through legal intervention exceeded $4.9 million. Medicaid, SCHIP and other health-related assistance resolved cases resulted in an average benefit value of $18,925/case, SSI and education cases had an average value of $9,585 and $5,336 respectively. HeLP services resulted in improved access to health care, education resources, and in financial cost savings to families. HeLP provided cost avoidance to the health care system by securing entitlement benefits (Medicaid, SCHIP, SSI) for children with neurodevelopmental disabilities. Interdisciplinary practice among health care and legal providers can result in resources to address legal and social determinants of health concerns that exacerbate the complex needs of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities and their families.
Social Support and Job Tenure for Individuals with Schizophrenia
Poster Session Min Yi Wu, Ying Chun Chien
This study was to explore whether the perceived social support of people with schizophrenia who have entered the general workplace influenced their stable employment. We used two methods to examine the employment stability: Number of days in the employment, and, Number of days in the stable employment. If all participants were stable in the employment during the study period, we followed up the number of days in stable employment after the end of the study. This study observes the association between perceived social support from the participants and the stable employment status up to six months. We invited patients with schizophrenia who were currently employed in a general workplace and received medical services at the hospital of the investigator between March 31, 2016 and February 20, 2017. Finally, twelve participants fulfilled the inclusion criteria and were enrolled in this study. The Interpersonal Support Evaluation List (ISEL) adapted from Cohen & Hoberman (1983) was used to measure the intensity of social support type perceived by the participants in different sources. The survey was conducted three times: on the first day of the study period, the end of the third month, and the end of the sixth month. We used descriptive statistics, paired samples t test, analysis of variance, and Spearman’s rho for statistical analysis. This study found that enhancing family support for people with schizophrenia provided extensive information support and provided various kinds of social support from different sources and types
The Effects of a Ten Week Exercise and Nutritional Program on Quality of Life Measures
Poster Session Alisa Drapeaux
The purpose of this study includes partnering with Farrells Bodyshaping to study the effect of their 10-week program on the quality of life of their participants. Drake University will distribute approximately 3500 Quality of Life surveys (validated instrument) to participants in April with no identifiable information on the survey. We will utilize one primary contact at Farrell's to distribute the survey (email) to each of the participants across the United States. The survey will be sent out to participants during the 1st week of the 10-week program and after the final week of the program. We will compile the data in conclusion of the study and compare the pre and post results for physical, emotional and mental health changes.
Evaluating Participation and Self-Reported Behavioral Change among Head Start Teachers: Head Start Wellness Pilot Program
Poster Session Michelle Yetman, Adam Blancher, Tyler Reekes
Head Start (HS) is a federally funded preschool program for children whose families are living in poverty. HS teachers are an “at-risk” population for increased health-related concerns. Previous research supports that most HS teachers have low income, high-stress jobs, and have negative health-related behaviors in comparison to groups with similar demographics (Snyder & Hill, 2018). The aim of this study was to improve health and wellness outcomes in a sample of 240 “at-risk” HS teachers and support staff. A ten-month program was developed that was composed of health education, health promotion, and disease prevention, and utilization of behavioral-change technologies (iPhone Apps) directed at health habit improvements. Utilizing a pretest/post-test design, results suggested an increase in more positive attitudes toward a “culture of wellness” as rated by the teachers (chi-square = 37.29, df = 1, p<0.001). Overall, 88% of participants reported making healthy lifestyle choices. For example, among the numerous behavioral changes reported, 72% of teachers reported using health app technology for the first time as a result of participation in the program. Ten specific behaviors were targeted for intervention, with varying degrees of success. This study is Phase I of a multi-year behaviorally-based intervention program designed to target HS employee well-being.
Raising Awareness for Preventable Diseases through a Student-initiated Intercollegiate Collaborative Effort in the Boston Community
Online Poster Jiancheng Mo, Thoma Qafko
The need for health education has always been advocated by community leaders and public health professionals. Consistent evidence has suggested a trend in the association between increased health education and improved health management. College students, especially those who intend to pursue a health professional career, play an important role in health education by partaking in local and national health initiatives. An interdisciplinary student organization known as the Association of Student Medical Writers (ASMW) was formed at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS) University. The overarching goal of ASMW is to mobilize college students to encourage awareness of preventable diseases in the patient community in Boston while promoting student opportunities in community outreach presentations and medical writing. To achieve this goal, student volunteers translate important findings from academic articles addressing public health concerns for the patient audience in a newsletter format, as supervised by MCPHS faculty members. The ASMW newsletter is open for contribution from students in all universities. Each month, we select and deliver relevant, faculty-edited student medical writings to community centers and elderly homes around Boston and coordinate sites for oral or poster presentations. As a result of this effort, student volunteers reported that their participation has helped build their professional portfolio, improve their writing skills, and build confidence in public speaking. In this session, we will present our past and current services, student survey results, organization achievements, and future directions.
Bridging the Self-Efficacy Gap in Problem Drinking Moderation Between Education Levels: Education Status Moderates Relationship between Self-efficacy and Drinking Outcomes in Problem Drinkers
Poster Session Cameron Haslip
Lower education level is linked to higher mortality rates, poorer consequences for problem drinkers (Makes et al., 2003), and drinking excessiveness in men (Van Oers et a., 1999). Education level has also been linked to different reported levels of self-efficacy (Coleman & Karraker, 2000; Clark & Dodge, 1999). Self-efficacy and motivation have both been found to be significant predictors of decreased drinking over trials and follow-ups (Morgenstern et al., 2016). This study investigated whether education level moderates the relationship between self-efficacy and drinking outcome behavior in a sample of 96 participants engaged in an RCT of Motivational Interviewing for problem drinkers. We predicted that as the level of education increases, the negative relationship between self-efficacy and drinking outcomes increases. Moderation analyses were run on 139 problem drinkers involved in an RCT where participants either received Motivational Interviewing (MI), Spirit-only Motivational Interviewing (SOMI), or Self-Change (SC). Majority of participants have a completed bachelor’s degree (n=51, 36.6%), or graduate degree (n=36, 25.9%). After controlling for baseline drinking and alcohol dependency, Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE; Zeger & Liang, 1986; Zeger, Liang, & Albert, 1988) found self-efficacy to significantly predict changes in the sum of standard drinks per week (SSD) (Wald Chi-Square=3.43, df=12; p=.000). While still controlling for baseline drinking and alcohol dependency, education was found to significantly moderate the relationship between self-efficacy and SSD (Wald Chi-Square=10.80, df=3; p=.01). These results from this sample of problem drinkers support the hypothesis that education level is a significant moderator between self-efficacy and drinking outcomes per week.
Physical Health and Mental Health Functioning of Physically Active Cancer Survivors in Rural Hawaii
Online Poster Cheryl Ramos
Physical activity can improve physical and mental health functioning of cancer survivors. The American Cancer Society and the American College of Sports Medicine have developed guidelines for exercise for cancer survivors. However, approximately one of three cancer survivors in the United States do not participate in any leisure-time physical activity. The aims of our study were to examine how exercise impacts the physical and mental health of cancer survivors in rural Hawai‘i. Adults 18 years of age and older were eligible for participation if 1) they were diagnosed with breast, prostate, or colo-rectal cancer 12 months or more prior to their study participation, and 2) had completed cancer treatment. Fifty-six (56) cancer survivors contacted the research team and were screened for study participation. Thirty-nine (39) cancer survivors indicated they did engage in physical activity for three or more days in the past 7 days, and seventeen (17) did not. Of the 56 cancer survivors screened for study participation thirty-one (31) did not meet the study inclusion criteria, resulting in twenty-five (25) cancer survivors who completed study assessments; fifteen (15) physically active and ten (10) physically inactive. Data collected for study participants included self-report of mental and physical health functioning (SF-36 Version 2); anthropometric measures including height, weight, body mass index, circumference (waist, abdomen, thigh), blood pressure, and heart rate; and body composition assessment using a DEXA. Results indicate that cancer survivors who are physically active have better physical and mental health compared to cancer survivors who are not physically active.
A Study of the Design and Medicine Collaborative Renovation of a Hospital Entryway
Poster Session Yukari Iwata, Momoyo Kaijima, Tomoaki Jikuya, Hirose Noriyuki, Asuka Imamura
This study investigates the impact of the design and medicine collaborative renovation project that sought to improve patient comfort in hospital entryways through furniture redesign. Designing the comfortableness of hospital environments makes slower progress in Japan than other advanced nations. Since 2000, Japanese universities and hospitals started collaborative projects to improve hospital environments. From 2007, Tsukuba Medical Center has initiated several renovation projects with the University of Tsukuba’s Faculty of Art and Design. However, the hospital entryway still looked stark. This project’s objective was to provide a welcoming atmosphere with wooden furniture in the entryway. Students and staff attended conferences and workshops, and inspected furniture models. The furniture design objectives included: 1) creating continuity between the entryway and a garden outside with wooden pergolas; 2) building benches and a counter with curved shapes; and 3) fashioning a comfortable and aromatic environment with Japanese white cedar. Data were collected through multiple choice and open-ended questionnaires provided to forty-seven entryway users within three days. The results showed that respondents valued the bright, warm, and calm atmosphere in the entryway. They appreciated the feel of the wood and the furniture’s curved shape. However, patients evaluated the benches as uncomfortable because of their hard seats. Thus, the wooden furniture fostered a comfortable atmosphere in the entryway. This success in furniture design resulted from much discussion and examination during the renovation process. However, the designer and staff did not consider patient conditions sufficiently. Therefore, a hospital’s renovation process should involve both the staff and patients.
The Social Influence of Graphic Design on Health Promotion and Education: Why We Need to Encourage More Graphic Designers to Think About Health Promotion and Education in a Visually Compelling Way
Poster Session Jong Yoon Kim
Graphic Design, also known as communication design, is the art and practice of planning and projecting ideas and experiences with visual and textual content. We, graphic designers, are professionally trained to inform audiences in visually effective way, such as innovative logo designs, engaging web designs, and creative packaging designs. But there’s another avenue of design that does well when sourced to the crowd that can have significant impacts outside of profit margins: socially influential design. I am convinced that the quality of design plays a bigger role in our lives than ever before. Designers are not only good at designing functionalities but also good at solving problems, and especially in recognizing problems that people didn't previously consider to be problems at all. This poster/exhibition session will feature various possibilities of graphic design tools and methods connecting scientific and medical information to visual communication.
