Seed projects
The BRANCH initiative is supporting these projects through a small seed grant and with mentorship and guidance.
Effect of the Medicare Annual Wellness Visit questionnaire on aging perceptions
Americans with Medicare are entitled to an Annual Wellness Visit. At the start of the visit, patients are asked to complete a four-page health and well-being questionnaire. This project explores the questionnaire content and how it may affect people's perceptions of their own aging process.
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Charles Xu, a medical student at Tufts University School of Medicine, leads this project. His research interests include perceptions of aging and survey design. He works with Wayne Altman and Steven Law of the Law Stroud Foundation on this project.
Charles Xu
Courage to Live: Documenting the journey of Ubutwari Bwo Kubaho, a community of widows and wives of perpetrators united in healing
This project focuses on documenting the history and impact of Ubutwari Bwo Kubaho ("Courage to Live"), a Rwandan peace-building organization formed by widows of the genocide and the wives of the perpetrators who killed their husbands. By recording the personal stories, collective experiences, and reconciliation efforts of its members, the project seeks to preserve the legacy of their courage and healing. It aims to shed light on their unique journey of forgiveness, unity, and rebuilding, offering valuable insights into postgenocide reconciliation and community resilience.
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Melissa Jones
Melissa Jones leads this project. Melissa is a recent graduate of Harvard University and a recipient of the Michael C. Rockefeller Travel Fellowship, through which she is spending a year in Rwanda to learn about community building and reconciliation efforts. With a background in biomedical engineering, a deep dedication to community service, and a profound interest in postgenocide healing, Melissa seeks to uncover and share powerful lessons on fostering unity and building a healthier, more harmonious world for all.
Understanding weight stigma, disconfirming messages, and health outcomes
This project explores how weight stigma in healthcare is pervasive, breaking down the communication between patients and providers. This qualitative study explores how to better understand and explain the disconfirming experiences of individuals with larger bodies in healthcare settings. In-depth individual interviews and focus groups reveal broad themes from experiences shared among multiple participants. The aim of this study is to reveal and improve provider communication to reduce and eliminate the stigma surrounding weight in healthcare settings. This project is led by Jessica Rosenblum and Jyothi Chunduru with mentorship from Wayne Altman and Andrea Lambert South.
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Jessica L. Rosenblum
Jessica L. Rosenblum, a second-year MD/MPH student at Tufts University School of Medicine, is passionate about transforming the healthcare system and advancing quality, access, and equity of care. Before medical school, Jessica received her BA in Anthropology: Global Health and the Environment from Washington University in St. Louis (2020) and worked for several years at Mathematica in Washington, DC, as a health policy research associate.
Jyothi Chunduru
Jyothi Chunduru is an incoming third-year MD/MPH student at Tufts University School of Medicine currently in her research year. She graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2020 with a BS in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. Prior to medical school, she spent one year working as a student success coach for elementary-grade students in City Year, an AmeriCorps program dedicated to uplifting and empowering under-resourced schools and communities. Throughout medical school, her interest in underserved communities has continued to inspire her extracurricular activities.
Balint group effectiveness in medical education: Facilitator communication strategies, student perspective-taking, and evidence of empathy development
Balint groups provide a supportive setting for clinicians and those training to be clinicians to explore the psychological aspects of their practice. Tufts University School of Medicine received support from the Law Stroud Foundation for an educational pilot project to engage fourth-year medical students in the Balint group experience.
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This study draws from Balint group facilitator interviews to reflect on the function and efficacy of Balint group sessions in medical school curriculum. Effective facilitator strategies include setting expectations, allowing for silence, creating an emotionally safe space, group cohesion, and facilitator reflection and reframing. Results also indicate that facilitators encourage student empathy use through strategies of creating space to explore, bias recognition, empathy willingness, naming emotions, and providing supportive feedback.
The research aspect of this project is led by Andrea Lambert South, PhD, Professor of Communication at Northern Kentucky University. She studies family communication in various contexts including law, death, humor use, and stepfamily dynamics. In addition, she is the cofounder of the Weight Stigma Lab housed in the School of Media and Communication at Northern Kentucky University.
Andrea Lambert South
Facilitators' experience with Balint sessions
This project and resulting manuscript explores facilitators' experiences with Balint sessions. The study aimed to identify obstacles to facilitation, articulate the value of Balint sessions from the facilitator's perspective, evaluate facilitators' preparedness, and gather improvement recommendations. Insights from this work could enhance training and outcomes by helping other institutions recognize common challenges and understand the benefits of Balint sessions.
Whittney H. Darnell, PhD, is a Professor of Communication and Health Communication at Northern Kentucky University. As a researcher she specializes in conversational quality and has completed research with multiple academic/practitioner partners. Most recently, with Andrea Lambert South, she cofounded the Weight Stigma Lab in the School of Media and Communication at Northern Kentucky University.
Whitney Darnell
Exploring new technologies to support the health and well-being of underserved Irish communities
This project aims to learn how to create custom AI chatbots that are meaningful and purposeful and explore if this is a feasible solution for providing scalable health and well-being support. The project is situated within Ashley's Purposeful AI working group at Boston College. The project addresses the codesign and pilot of an AI chatbot to connect relationship science and primary care with Boston College student learning. Foundations learned will be used to develop purposeful AI solutions for community health and well-being in partnership with health coaches and members of an Irish community.
Croia Loughnane
Croia Loughnane is a PhD scholar in the Digital Health Research Group at the Centre for Positive Health Science in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) University of Medicine and Health Sciences. As a positive health coach accredited by the European Mentoring and Coaching Council, Croia is exploring in her PhD the potential of connecting new digital health technologies and positive health coaching to increase the health and well-being of Irish communities. Specifically, Croia is interested in the optimal balance between digital technologies for scalability and accessibility, and human connection and communication for meaning, purpose, and relationship building in digital health interventions.