1. Mind-Body Skills Program: 9-week 2-hours/week experiential course that provides students, faculty, and staff with self-care and reflection skills combined with group support to adaptively deal with stressors and build resilience. Faculty and staff facilitators are trained to lead groups during a 3-day immersive, experiential retreat. This course has trained faculty/staff in the Colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Allied Health, Law, DAAP, CCM, CECH, Arts & Sciences, Blue Ash, and CCHMC. Mixed method data collected pre-post 9 week program and at one-year follow-up.
   1. Novak, B. K., Gebhardt, A., Pallerla, H., McDonald, S.B., Haramati, A., & Cotton, S. (2020). Impact of a university-wide interdisciplinary mind-body skills program on student mental and emotional well-being. Global Advances in Health and Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1177/2164956120973983

1. Mindful Stress Reduction at the Free Store Food Bank Cincinnati COOKS! Program: 6-week group stress reduction program modified from the evidence-based Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program developed by Dr. Jon Kabat Zinn. This program has been piloted at Cincinnati COOKS!, a second-chance job training program offered through the Free Store Food Bank. Mixed method data collected pre-post each program series. 
2. College of Medicine Student Wellness Assessment: annual assessment of all College of Medicine medical students to develop and test a cross-institutional standard evaluation for student emotional and mental well-being. Currently we are on year 4 of longitudinal cohort data collection.
3. Build it Bites: BUILD-IT-BITES workshops created at Cincinnati Children’s by Dr Carina Braeutigam combines hands on teaching kitchen practices with mindfulness to avoid overall malnutrition and create positive culinary experiences for young children/adolescents with cancer and their families. Post-intervention mixed-method evaluations are collected.
4. Parkinson’s wellness program: To promote wellness through the prevention and treatment of Parkinson’s disease with lifestyle and behavioral approaches including nutrition, physical activity, stress reduction and connectivity, and evidence-based integrative therapies. All integrative health clinical programs are evaluated for feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effectiveness using a practice-based research approach.
5. Creating Caring Communities: 7-week 1-hour/week program that provides students, faculty, and staff with group support and encourages self-care and wellness. This program is designed to create an environment to connect in a safe, authentic setting that allows participants to speak freely about how they are adjusting professionally and personally in these virtual times and to share challenges, joys, and to be there for each other. 
   1. UC Creating Caring Communities Program: Additional Information (PDF)
   2. Evaluating ‘Creating Caring Communities’: A medical student pilot wellness program to aid in the transition to medical school during COVID 19 (PDF). Emily Williams, Harini Pallerla, MS Susan McDonald, MA, Laura Malosh PhD, Sonali Doshi, Sian Cotton PhD. Poster Presented at the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health Virtual Symposium. April 11-13, 2021.

Faculty Scholarly Activity

For individual affiliated faculty research areas, priorities and activity, please visit our Directory Page and click on the faculty member for research information. 

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Current and previous funding sources include National Institute of Child Health and Development, Cincinnati Veteran Affairs Medical Center, and foundation grants.