The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has heightened awareness of whole-person health and mental well-being. Health care providers  are interested in finding ways to treat patients in ways that consider the whole person and not just the specific disease. To that end, researchers at the University of Minnesota’s School of Nursing developed a consumer-friendly app MyStrengths+MyHealth (MSMH), community validated and at 5th grade level. More information at is at the MSMH website.

Clinical Associate Professor Sripriya Rajamani, Assistant Professor Robin Austin, and Professor Karen Monsen from the School of Nursing recently published a study that used MSMH data gathered from attendees at the Minnesota State Fair as part of 2021 Driven to Discover (D2D) studies. The project, Toward Understanding Social Determinants of Health and Resilience for Minnesotans, received a UMII Updraft grant in March 2020. The results of this research were published in the journal JMIR Nursing: S. Rajamani, R. Austin, E. Geiger-Simpson, R. Jantraporn, S. Park, K.A. Monsen. Understanding Whole-Person Health and Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond: A Cross-sectional and Descriptive Correlation Study. JMIR Nursing 5(1):e38063 (2022). doi: 10.2196/38063.

These results were also presented as a presentation at the U of M School of Nursing’s Research Day 2022 and as a poster at the 2022 Annual Research Conference of the Midwest Nursing Research Society.

In 2020, UMII merged the Updraft and On the Horizon Grant programs to form the UMII Seed Grant program

Research Computing unit:

  • University of Minnesota Informatics Institute

Image description: MyStrength + MyHealth app screenshots with challenges, strengths, and needs for exercising. Image and description, S. Rajamani, et al. JMIR Nursing 5(1):e38063 (2022). doi: 10.2196/38063.

screenshots of MyStrength + MyHealth app interface