Stepping Out and Becoming a Bridge For Community Wholeness

Rhonda Spencer-Hwang, DrPH, MPH

Background

Critically needed is action encouraging whole health (mind, body, and spirit), across the US and around the world, especially during and following the Covid-19 pandemic. With stress, depression, and chronic health conditions soaring, we greatly need interventions that promote a culture of whole health and resiliency. Often times research institutions and universities are at the forefront of such intervention discoveries. A major challenge for these institutions is translating ground-breaking health research findings into something tangible that the general public can put into practice.

Contact: Rspencer@llu.edu

Description

The community of Loma Linda, CA (an Adventist community) has a special designation as community with exceptional health and longevity. In 2012, I started studying the childhood habits of Adventist centenarians (100+ years in age) to see how we could help parents with young children today, promoting resiliency in families. From the research I found our centenarians had endured tremendous hardships and had overcome them. I published my findings in a peer reviewed scientific journal. As an epidemiologist in the School of Public Health with health promotion program, I became inspired to do more to help take our unique designation as the fountain of youth and help communities put into practice the principles I found through my research.

Implications

As a faith based institution, at LLU we have a higher calling in our lives to go out and reach as many people as we can promoting life-long and especially eternal resilience.

Lessons Learned

  1. One of the first and most important lessons is for researchers and practitioners across our campus to consider in addition to publishing in scientific journals, to publish in other avenues to help promote wholeness and resiliency.
  2. If you wish to publish for the general public (like through books and materials for lay audience) seek support from others within and outside our institution who have published in this fashion. Harvard University has a seminar for helping to publish, especially geared for health professionals. https://wps.hmscme.com/
  3. Understand that it may take 3 or 4 years to go from an idea to a published manuscript and perseverance along with prayer is key.
  4. If one of your callings is to publish, trust that God can move the pieces into place that you will need. For me, he had planned that a Christian epidemiologist would be publishing a book promoting wholeness in the middle of a pandemic.