Health Sciences

Whole Health Evaluation for Veterans

Holistic forms of healthcare treatment are becoming increasingly important. Many research studies have been conducted on holistic treatment options for veterans, demonstrating their value and encouraging implementation. The federally funded Veterans Affairs (VA) Healthcare System, also the largest healthcare system in the USA, employs “Whole Health”, a holistic system of care, involving a diverse array of modalities, including yoga, acupuncture, meditation, tai chi, massage therapy, and more. This research seeks to evaluate the understanding, awareness, and treatment outcomes of Whole Health by those at VA, including employees, patients, relatives, and volunteers. A quantitative and qualitative Qualtrics survey was given to those at the Ann Arbor VA Healthcare System to analyze such by having participants rank themselves in categories like mental health, emotional health, spiritual health, and more. Survey-takers also identified which Whole Health modalities they have participated in. Currently, the research is ongoing. At the time of publication of this abstract, the data has been collected and preliminary analysis is in process. Specific, detailed, and final results will be available at the time of the Symposium presentation. Our team expects that the resulting data from the survey will indicate a strong understanding of the VA Whole Health system and its benefits. We anticipate that those who have utilized the offered VA modalities will report a greater health than those who haven’t. These results will demonstrate the value and relevance of holistic healthcare, specifically when treating veterans. In turn, our results will support the initiative to implement holistic medical treatment in more hospitals/healthcare systems worldwide and contribute to the academic discourse about the benefits of holistic healthcare.

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Whole Health Educational Evaluation for Veterans and VA Staff

divreddy

“Whole Health Educational Resource Development and Evaluation for Veterans and VA Staff” A study was undertaken with the purpose of evaluating and identifying resource effectiveness in veterans or VA staff related to Whole Health usage. The federal government has taken interest in determining if Whole Health is a more effective healthcare care technique that can treat serious mental and physical conditions that can occur as a result of military engagement or treatment of military members. Review of Passport to Whole Health 3rd Edition 2018, videos on the VA Administration website, and mentor guidance helped prepare the development of a survey to be distributed. This survey is yet to be distributed to veteran and VA participants through online and physical means. Online through qualtrics and by hand for physical copies with the means of spreading the word through the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System in Ann Arbor, MI. We are yet to determine the findings, but we expect to be able to determine pain points associated with the treatment and effective modalities as well. Based on these results we are to address and analyze the data to report our findings on Whole Health resources.

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Suppressing heterotopic ossification and fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva in mouse models through targeting BMP type 1 receptor kinases

jademaya

Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP) is a rare genetic condition distinguished by the development of bone in soft tissue, known as heterotopic ossification (HO). FOP is a gain-of-function mutation, causing substitution of an arginine by histidine (R206H) within BMP type 1 receptor ACVR1 protein. This disorder severely impacts an individual’s life, as it leads to body malformations and disabilities. While the exact mechanism of HO progression is still unclear, studies have found that HO development is accompanied with an increase of BMP-SMAD signaling and inflammation. In this research project, we aim to discover methods to decrease HO in FOP mouse models, by attempting to decrease BMP signaling. ACVR1, BMPR1a, and BMPR1b are BMP type 1 receptors. Our previous studies showed that BMP-SMAD dependent signaling is decreased by the knockout of BMPR1a or ACVR1 in specific tissues. By deleting one and/or multiple of these receptors, we predict that it will decrease BMP signaling, ultimately suppressing HO. We use the constitutively active ACVR1 model (caACVR1-Q207D), which develops massive HO within two weeks after activation of BMP signaling with tissue injury. But our study showed our anticipation was wrong. We found that the HO was not inhibited in ACVR1-Q207D mouse model by knocking out BMP type 1 receptors. Additionally, the BMP-SMAD dependent signaling pathway was not inhibited by knocking out BMP type 1 receptors in the HO mouse models. Due to the fact that the outcomes of this project did not support our initial hypothesis, we need to analyze other ways to decrease BMP signaling to suppress HO formation. This research hopes to bring us closer to finding the first effective treatment for FOP/HO, helping the individuals whose lives are permanently impacted by this genetic disease.

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Modeling cardiac aging with stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes carrying a mutation for advanced aging

elihall

Using various images taken through a confocal microscope, the area of the nuclei in the heart cells of mice were measured in an effort to compare two varieties of cells. Those that were extracted from mice suffering from Hutchinson Gilford Progeria Syndrome (HGPS), a severe and rare cardiovascular disease. Comparing these two types of cells provided a better idea of the meaningful ways in which cell morphology is different in regards to the presence of HGPS. Differences reflecting statistical significance were identified between the heart cells of “healthy” mice and those afflicted with HGPS. This data collection helps build upon the foundation and overarching goal of the lab which is to model cardiac aging through the use of stem cell derived cardiomyocytes.

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The genetic impacts of radiation on long-lived trees: A Chernobyl Perspective.

hberehan

Since nuclear radiation was discovered, researchers have long-known that creatures who have been exposed to high levels through nuclear bombings or nuclear disasters will either be killed instantly or suffer damage to their genetic material. In plants, these genetic accidents can then be passed on to their offspring through mutations that are carried through generations through somatic mutations. Despite our best efforts as a species, humans have accidentally, and intentionally caused several nuclear disasters throughout the world including Chernobyl (1986), Three Mile Island (1979), Fukushima (2011), Hiroshima (1945) and Nagasaki (1945) to name a few. Unlike our expectations, that these areas would be deserted and useless, nature has rebounded and succeeded incredibly well within each of these areas. Things have gone so well, in fact, that there has been a recent call to investigate the effect of radiation on plants exposed to these levels of radiation to try to gain insight into this phenomena. Our team aims to examine the genetic makeup of trees that have withstood these high levels of nuclear exposure. We plan to sequence the genomes of trees that lived before, and then survived these nuclear disasters. We will sample the oldest branches (bottom of the trees) in addition to the youngest branches (tops of the trees) to try and detect any genetic changes that resulted from the radiation exposure (ex. Increased mutation rates, etc.). Those somatic mutations would, ideally, allow us to quantify genetic changes that have likely helped the tree to survive these adverse conditions, and allow us to determine what genes can help trees survive such extreme changes in the environment.

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The Impact of COVID19 virtual learning in Children Literacy

Julio Roque Buenrostro

Changes in the school environment drastically affect children’s ability to learn. In the middle of March 2020, there was a nationwide closure of all schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This specific event caused most children to have a reduction in their classwork to accommodate for the new virtual school format. The decrease in schoolwork and the unstructured learning format can be compared to a similar educational phenomenon known as “summer slump”. Summer slump is known as the loss of student knowledge caused by the long summer break in between school years. In this study we are trying to explore how effective virtual learning is for the development of children’s reading skills. We are also looking at the impact of learning in a home setting, which is full of distractions . In order to assess this, we compared the results of children’s reading abilities before the pandemic and throughout it. We analyze the data of 69 participants. The study’s participants are from different backgrounds and are between the ages of six to ten. Each participant was recruited from southern Michigan and began online school at the end of September 2020.They were previously enrolled in another study where they were tested on their reading skills using Woodcock-Johnson IV. The raw scores from each participant were standardized to accurately compare the progress of the participants over time. We predict that there would be no change of a decrease in the children’s ability to read.The main purpose of this study was to bring awareness in the school systems and to the parents about the students progress in reading.

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Adolescent Eating Habits and Motivation at the Initiation of an mHealth Behavior Study

xlzhu

Background: In the United States, obesity is the most common chronic illness among adolescents, and it is especially prevalent in Black/African American and Hispanic/LatinX populations. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the prevalence of obesity for children aged 2 to 19 years old was 25.8% for Hispanic youth and 22% for non-Hispanic Black youth, compared to only 14.1% for non-Hispanic White youth. Excess weight has put millions of Black and Hispanic/LatinX adolescents in the US at risk for morbidity and premature mortality. However, communications technology offers a novel way to deliver tailored health behavior interventions for these youth. As part of a larger project to design an app to help adolescents make healthy choices at fast food restaurants (FFR), we assessed participants’ fast food eating habits and their willingness to consider making changes when eating out.

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CHEAR Research Project

darrylhe

Background: Obesity is prevalent among adolescents living in the United States, and Black/African American and Hispanic/LatinX adolescents are disproportionately affected. Between 2018-19, the prevalence of obesity for Caucasian youth aged 10-17 years old was 11.5%, while the prevalence for Hispanic youth was 20.7%, and for Black youth the prevalence was 22.9%. Recent studies have shown that fast food franchises target areas with a high density of minority youth, leading to increased fast food consumption. However, with the emerging use of technology, mobile applications can help encourage adolescents to make healthier food choices and improve daily health habits. Tailored app content including images that are viewed as appealing and personally relevant provide a promising way to increase the effectiveness of mHealth applications. Yet little is known about Hispanic/Latinx teens’ preferences regarding images to be used in a health promotion app.

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Simulation of intracardiac electrograms to aid in the study of cardiac arrhythmias

evacheng

The main task of my project is to study the electrocardiogram(ECG) of human hearts, by building a model that can simulate the heart beats and then train it to be able to read in data from patients in real-life and give a diagnose through machine learning. The human heart Myocytes beats under the flow of ions(in-and-out and among cells) causing changes in voltages on cell membranes, which can be measured(through ECG). Under abnormal conditions, these regular changes will be disrupted, causing chaos in the electric flows in certain pattern(based on the specific illness). The change of voltage based on time can be expressed in mathematical ways using a set of differential equations. The features of the cells can be captured through object oriented programming: they all have periodic pulses but in different patterns due to their specific role in heart. After building such model, we can train it with data from real patients so that it will give a primary judgement on new patients. This tool is meant to help doctors, especially who works in emergency, with a relatively reliable suggestion which may improve the efficiency of giving a medical diagnose.

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