Public Health – Page 2 – UROP Spring Symposium 2021

Public Health

Sandy Hook Promise Evaluations

The goal of the Sandy Hook Promise is to improve the lives of students by increasing safety and comfort in both schools and the broader community. The program achieves this through the implementation of the Say Something Program, which encourages students to report troubling or abnormal behaviors to the administration before situations spiral out of control. To gather results for further analysis of the effectiveness of the Say Something and Sandy Hook Promise programs, numerous surveys have been conducted on students and teachers involved in the process. Furthermore, interviews have been conducted on administrators inquiring about the ease of implementation and use of the program throughout the school year. These results have been collected across some of the largest school districts in the U.S., including LA and Miami-Dade counties. Although the program is still in effect and results are being collected in real-time, certain conclusions about the effectiveness of the program can already be drawn with data from previous waves of students. Overall, after using STATA and SPSS software to conduct data analysis, it is evident that rates of depression and violence, along with feelings of unsafety, all decrease amongst students after the program has been present for over a year. This shows clear evidence that the program truly does have a positive impact on students’ safety. This research is extremely valuable, as protecting our future generations is amongst the top of our priorities, especially when they are in educational spaces. After numerous threats to student safety following school shootings such as Sandy Hook, programs such as this one have a chance to truly improve the school environment and the lives of students as they seek to better themselves through education.

Cannabis Legalization and Familial Factors Effects on Usage in Children and Parents

In November 2018, a bill was passed to legalize recreational cannabis usage. In response, FYI-3 (Flint Youth Injury Study 3) decided to study how parenting attitudes and behaviors can affect children’s usage of cannabis. The study included attitudes and perceptions towards the new bill. FYI-3 used a past cohort of participants from a previous study, (Flint Youth Injury 1) and conducted live interviews as well as surveys from both parents and their children from the pool of participants. Risk factors and promotive factors will then be predicted and assessed, based on survey answers and both parental and child responses during interviews, using a codebook. Although the study is not yet completed, these risk factors will show how parental attitudes and usage of cannabis can affect children’s behavior around and toward cannabis. This study will serve to provide insight on familial attitudes and behaviors towards cannabis, in hopes that future states that pass legalization bills will see the effects on families and youth.

FYI-3

Despite the recent increase in US states where recreational marijuana is legal, little is known about how these policies affect low-income communities and families in difficult circumstances. The overall idea is that recreational marijuana usage is a double edged sword; helping people overcome mental health obstacles or eating disorders in some situations, but creating more dangerous neighborhood environments in others. This study analyzes the perspectives of families in Flint, Michigan on the state’s marijuana policy through qualitative interviews with over 100 clients in the Genesee County Area. An analysis of these interviews yields the clients’ own personal experiences with recreational marijuana; how it has influenced their past and now currently affects their children. Depending on the client, interviews may either certify or challenge the following arguments about legal recreational marijuana: 1) recreational marijuana disparages communities and contributes to an addiction cycle that increases life’s challenges; 2) recreational marijuana helps relieve stress, anxiety and other domestic problems; 3) legal marijuana has little effect on day-to-day life because it is still primarily sold on the streets without tax. The stories add nuance to our understanding of the positive and negative consequences of legal marijuana in lower income communities in the Genesee County area. This study, titled FYI-3, is the third stage of a longitudinal interview collection of Flint residents and their personal experiences with marijuana. In using a frequently underrepresented sector of the American population”” truths from low income and minority communities””this project will contribute to future research on similar topics and influence future policy decisions.

Optimizing a Daily Mindfulness Intervention to Reduce Stress from Discrimination among Sexual and Gender Minorities of Color

There is emerging evidence to suggest that mindfulness interventions reduce the impact of stress for people who identify with both a sexual and racial minority and thus increase wellbeing. However, there is little research that has been done to pinpoint what combination of mindfulness interventions most effectively reduce the impact of stress. This study seeks to determine what combination of the intervention components of mindfulness of purpose, connection and awareness are most efficient and effective at reducing the impact of stress from discrimination in sexual racial minorities and promoting wellbeing. While the study has only just begun, I predict that the intervention that incorporates awareness, purpose and connection will be the most effective at reducing stress in sexual and racial minorities.

Optimizaing a Daily Mindfulness Intervention to Reduce Stress from Discrimination among Sexual and Gender Minorities of Color

There is emerging evidence to suggest that mindfulness interventions reduce the impact of stress for people who identify with both a sexual and racial minority and thus increase wellbeing. However, there is little research that has been done to pinpoint what combination of mindfulness interventions most effectively reduce the impact of stress. This study seeks to determine what combination of the intervention components of mindfulness of purpose, connection, and awareness are most efficient and effective at reducing the impact of stress from discrimination in sexual racial minorities and promoting well-being. While the study has only just begun, I predict that the intervention that incorporates awareness, purpose, and connection will be the most effective at reducing stress in sexual and racial minorities.

Southwest Detroit Community Court Program

The Southwest Detroit Community Justice Center (SWDCJC) works to increase the safety and fairness of the area they serve by increasing public trust in the justice system, reducing crime, and meeting the needs of the people. They achieve this by offering restorative alternatives to traditional justice system processes like fines and incarceration. Rather, SWDCJC offers programs that educate and provide opportunities for community service. Through the community court program, SWDCJC has decreased incarceration and money owed for misdemeanor crimes, overall increasing the wellbeing in the zip codes served. They are looking to expand their impact by adding programs dedicated to stopping human trafficking as well.

Southwest Detroit Community Court Program: The Clean Slate Bill

On October 12th, 2020, Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a series of bills into law, the most significant and popular of these being the “Clean Slate Bill”. “For too long, criminal charges have created barriers to employment, barriers to housing and others for hundreds of thousands of Michiganders. These bipartisan bills are going to be a game-changer,” Whitmer said. This bill will affect hundreds of thousands of Michigan residents who have criminal records and traffic violations with the first aspects of the bill going into effect on April 10th, 2021. The Southwest Detroit Community Justice Center (SWDCJC) is passionate about criminal justice reform and fair access to the justice system. The nonprofit’s mission statement states, “The mission of the Southwest Detroit Community Justice Center is to increase public trust in the justice system, assist in the reduction of crime, improve the quality of life and meet the needs of the community.” SWDCJC’s focus is four zip code areas in Detroit and the organization’s CEO and my research mentor LaNeice Jones has been committed to promoting education and criminal reform for over a year. The organization has hosted several events to help prevent offenses and reform those who already have offenses. Specifically, this research project was made to find best practices to spread the word about the Clean Slate Bill to help expunge the records of thousands of individuals. We are increasing awareness of this bill by synthesizing information to distribute to the community, collecting statistics for grant writing, and hosting an “Ask the Judge” event to educate the greater community about the ins and outs of this bill. Our ultimate goal is to help people expunge their records so they can have a greater opportunity to apply to better jobs and participate in services that are restricted to people with criminal records. Increasing access to job opportunities by expunging records will help fuel diversity of thought and region to many different career paths, and give people a second chance who desperately deserve one.

Whole Health Evaluation for Veterans and VA Staff

Whole Health is a care model developed by VA clinics and hospitals in an effort to integrate complementary medicine, prevention, and the uniqueness of each patient to provide healthcare that ultimately focuses on what matters to the patient, rather than what is the matter with them. Such a care model is crucial in the U.S where healthcare often focuses merely on treatment, rather than prevention, and preventable deaths are estimated to make up 20-40% of total deaths caused by the top five causes of mortality. This study aims to expand on the current body of research that evaluates the efficacy of Whole Health, by garnering feedback about various aspects of health and how the program has come about addressing them. The research is conducted through a questionnaire created on the Qualtrics platform, which will be electronically and potentially physically distributed to veterans, caregivers, and staff. Data from the questionnaire will be inputted into an Excel spreadsheet to be later processed and analyzed using SPSS, a quantitative and qualitative statistical analysis software. Previous studies on Whole Health have indicated an improvement in social engagement, physical wellbeing, and perceived stress for patients enrolled in the program. So while results are currently pending, we expect our data to also suggest Whole Health’s adequate provision of care at least within the aspects of wellbeing mentioned above. Analysis of pending results will provide valuable insight for evaluating and potentially informing future changes to the program to better reflect its mission.

Whole Health Evaluation for Veterans and VA Staff

Whole Health is a system of patient-centered care in the Veterans Affairs healthcare administration focusing on non-traditional integrative modalities such as nutrition, mindfulness, spirituality, etc. Background research has been limited to certain areas of Whole Health. Other areas need to be further studied. Spirituality and telehealth are two areas that need further research. Our research group has designed a 25 question Qualtrics survey to explore these two areas as well as other areas such as mental health and nutrition further. With this survey, we seek to better understand perceptions of spirituality/faith-based support, telehealth, and other areas (such as nutrition). 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.

Whole Health Educational Resource Development and Evaluation for Veterans and VA Staff

Research is being conducted at the Ann Arbor VA hospital in order to assess their Whole Health approach to prevention and treatment, and the use of different resources among patient and staff populations. Whole Health is a system of care that focuses on what matters most to each Veteran. This approach is evidence-informed by medical literature, yet holistic and patient-driven. Multiple teams of undergraduate students began by independently researching relevant practices and modalities commonly available for Veterans and staff members by examining both material provided by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as other recent literature in academic journals. Using the information collected from these sources, student teams developed multiple surveys to assess the use of some of the most prominent resources available, and to gain valuable insight from users’ perspectives about how these resources have impacted their health outcomes and quality of life as a whole. 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. It is intended that the information gathered from these surveys will indicate what the healthcare system is doing well and what areas need improvement to optimize patient and staff well-being.

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