Theme 1
Promote health, well-being, and quality of life of individuals across the lifespan, the communities and society as movement system experts.
Our team's research project looked at the effectiveness and feasibility of implementing a coached group health and wellness program for employees at the University of Vermont and University of Vermont Medical Center. There has been a growing need for wellbeing interventions especially after the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on employees level of stress, burnout and decreased quality of life. During this project, we looked at key outcomes that potentially influence quality of life of employees including perceived physical and mental health, perceived stress, and burnout.
This experience addressed the following graduate outcomes:
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1: The program that was implemented addressed many aspects of the movement system. The program was lead by Health and Wellness coaches for UVM and UVMMC employees, and was designed to be individualized so each participant could work on their own health goals. While this was a novel research study that was looking at feasibility, we were also committed to finding effective methods to improve participants quality of life.
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3: With this study, we are working with an inter-professional team including health and wellness coaches in an attempt to discover ways to optimize health outcomes among hospital and university employees. The program was implemented in a group setting which has potential to be a cost effective solution to addressing health outcomes in larger organizational settings.
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5: Programs like this help bring the need of employee wellbeing interventions to the forefront. Employee stress and burnout are becoming increasingly common and there is not a clear solution to address these issues. However, if we can find effective interventions, the health of our employees will improve, which can only be positive for the rest of our society's wellbeing.
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Each experience with Zeno Mt. Farm dramatically changed my perspective on what it meant to be a person-centered health care provider. The rock-climbing experience with the Zeno Mt. Farm group especially opened my eyes to the ideal way of improving health, well-being and quality of life for all individuals regardless of their ability. The mindset at Zeno Mt. Farm isn't to assess what skill level their participants have and then determine what activities they are limited to do due to those levels. Instead, they ask what activities every member wants to do, and they find enjoyable, creative ways to do it, finding a role for each person.
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This experience addressed the following graduate outcomes:
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5: All activities at Zeno Mt. Farm require a lot of advocacy and collaboration from all individuals involved including staff and participants, but the end goal is to increase quality of life and well-being of members of our society, especially those members whose needs have often been neglected.
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7: These experiences allowed me to practice altering my means of communication to best suit the individual participants with Zeno Mt. Farm to help them be successful in the context of the tasks they were participating in, which happened to be rock climbing with us. It was incredibly rewarding gaining insight from the participants and staff members to see how Zeno Mt. Farm is able to ensure everybody is successful when the proper mindset and adjustments are in place.
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10: These experiences further emphasized the importance of dedicating myself to community engagement to improve the quality of life of all individuals.