Social Medicine Forum Talk

Reposted from the Department of Social Medicine

Please join us at the next Social Medicine Forum talk, Wednesday, February 8th at noon in Bondurant 2035. Our speaker will be Michele Berger, Associate Professor in the Department of Women’s Studies and adjunct professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at our very own UNC-CH. Dr. Berger is also the Director of the Faculty Fellows Program at The Institute for the Arts and Humanities at UNC-Chapel Hill, and has an impressive range of interests, from qualitative methodology in research to the stigmatization of HIV+ women. Below is a summary of her talk for us: “Mindfulness and Education: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Studying Yoga, Mindfulness and the Health Practices of “At Risk” Adolescents.”

In this talk, Dr. Berger will discuss her involvement as a co-investigator since 2014 on a mixed methods study that seeks to measure and assess the health, emotional, and physiological effects of a yoga and meditation twelve-week intervention in an after school program that targets academically and behaviorally marginalized middle school students. She will present preliminary results. She will highlight the tensions and opportunities of a research process has been interdisciplinary, community-based, and participatory in nature, engaging with diverse community stakeholders in an effort to explore effective, low cost, and holistic interventions that support positive adolescent development and resiliency.