Sophie Branham
Pronouns: she/her
Research Mentor(s): Dr. Nikhil Parekh
Co-Presenter: McKaig, Ashley
Research Mentor School/College/Department: VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System / NonUM
Presentation Date: April 20
Presentation Type: Poster
Session: Session 4 – 2:40pm – 3:30 pm
Room: League Ballroom
Authors: Sophie Branham
Presenter: 114
Abstract
The Veteran Hopsital’s Whole Health System supports health and well-being as a patient-centered approach to health care that empowers and equips people to take charge of their health. It expands past traditional treatment style medicine to a holistic prevention style. Our research works to assess the benefit of this approach to medicine for clinicians, veteran patients, students, adults, etc. My research team and I want to understand how a person’s lifestyle in terms of choices and practices plays a role in their health overall. We are curious to observe how specific practices may be more or less beneficial for certain populations. We focus on Whole Health’s eight areas of self care: moving the body, surroundings, personal development, nutrition, recharge, relationships, spirit and soul, and power of the mind. We created a survey through qualtrics with sixty questions addressing the eight areas of self-care on the Circle of Health and to be randomly distributed throughout the local region and beyond. The questions were created to be applicable to all populations. In order to create well-formulated questions, we used the Passport to Whole Health, which gives a general introduction to Whole Health, observations of patient-doctor interactions, and our personal experiences of practicing Whole Health. After we receive the participants’ answers to the survey, we plan on analyzing their responses using SPSS. We predict that our results will yield a range of effectiveness in certain practices depending on the individual circumstances. We are limited to the results of the participants who opt to take the survey which may or may not be representative of various populations. The results of our research may be useful in better equipping healthcare professionals to prescribe certain lifestyle recommendations to patients depending on their individual circumstances. The practices serve to improve and maximize health overall.
Biomedical Sciences, Interdisciplinary, Public Health
