People cooking in a kitchen

Project CHEER Collaborates with the American Heart Association to Present at APHA

Natalie Littlefield, the community health director for the Lexington Division of the American Heart Association (AHA) has partnered with the Kentucky’s CDC State Disability & Health Program called Project CHEER (Community Health Education & Exercise Resources) to co-author a presentation titled “Promotion of Successful Inclusion of Individuals with Disabilities Through Universal Design in American Heart Association’s Health Programs,” that will be presented at the 2019 American Public Health Association’s (APHA) annual meeting and expo, November 2 – 6 in Philadelphia.
Presenting with Littlefield from Project CHEER will be Lindsey Mullis, Megan Jaspersen, and Danielle Augustin of the University of Kentucky Human Development Institute.
The presentation, scheduled for 3 pm EST on Monday, November 4, will review the community collaborations, universal design strategies in health programming, and pilot results of an inclusive offering of the AHA’s Mobile Kitchen series. Future directions for broadening efforts and sustainability will be explained. Additionally, presenters will briefly discuss adaptation and implementation of a second inclusive pilot of AHA’s Healthy for Life program with implementation late spring 2019. “This is such an important partnership with the AHA because we want to promote the broad accessibility of great health services to individuals who are often at the highest risk for being unhealthy and underserved, and this presentation provides us the opportunity to encourage other programs to do the same.” Lindsey Mullis, Inclusive Health Director, Project CHEER. Continue reading

Photo of Danielle Augustin

Spotlight on Danielle Augustin

Danielle Augustin is a part-time Inclusive Health Project Assistant at HDI with work spanning several projects, including the Health and Wellness Initiative: Project CHEER and Wellness Edge. Danielle is a student in the Master’s Health Promotion program with expected graduation in May, 2019. She will also be starting next semester as a Research Assistant under Dr. Elaine Eisenbaum’s newest grant, the Serious Mental Illness National Training Center grant from the Administration on Community Living. Continue reading

Child on swing.

Latest Fund for Excellence: Research on Impact of Physical Activity on ADHD Symptoms

We’re excited to share that HDI will be devoting a Fund for Excellence grant this spring to research focused on “A School-Based Physical Activity Intervention for Children with and without ADHD Symptomology” led by Megan Jaspersen, Dr. Alicia Fedewa, Dr. Heather Erwin, and Morgan Turner. Continue reading

Photo of attendees at Special Olympics

HDI Promotes Health and Wellness at the Special Olympics Kentucky State Basketball Tournament: The Healthy Athletes Event

HDI’s Elaine Eisenbaum, Lindsey Mullis, and Anna Fuller promoted good health with friends at the Special Olympics Kentucky State Basketball tournament—the Healthy Athletes event! Lindsey and Megan are the Kentucky Clinical Directors for the Health Promotion discipline, and Elaine is the Kentucky Clinical Director for the Strong Minds discipline. Strong Minds is a newly added Healthy Athletes discipline and this is the first time it was hosted in Kentucky! Strong Minds focuses on emotional wellness and developing strategies for coping with stress.

Athletes learn about and try different active coping strategies. This is important because we know that there are high rates of co-occurring mental health disabilities among people with intellectual disabilities. The Health Promotion discipline educates athletes on healthy living and healthy lifestyle choices, and also provides screenings for BMI, blood pressure, and bone density.

Photo of Rongxiu

Research Assistant Spotlight: Rongxiu Wu

by Bill Mazzoleni

Rongxiu Wu is from Anhui Province, China. Two years ago, she chose to study at UK as a doctoral student. She formerly studied at Shanghai University in China and her major was Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics. She currently studies Quantitative and Psychometric Methods in the College of Education at the University of Kentucky.

Working at HDI, Rongxiu assists Christina Espinosa with an online course as her teaching assistant. She does some revising, transcribing and captioning. She also helps Megan Jasperson with HDI’s Health and Wellness Program by doing some data analysis for it. She enjoys working in such an inclusive environment. She wants to apply what she learns from data analysis to the research of disability areas.

She enjoys doing yoga when she has the time. She also enjoys drinking Green Tea Frappuccino at Starbucks. She has traveled around the U.S. and the world. She has half of a year exchange experience at University College Cork in Ireland as a graduate student from China.  It was the first time she got to know other people with disabilities, and she saw a big difference in how people with disabilities are treated.