JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted an interest in whole-person health and emotional well-being. Informatics solutions through user-friendly tools such as mobile health applications (apps) offer immense value. Prior research developed a consumer-facing app MyStrengths+MyHealth (MSMH) using Simplified Omaha System Terms (SOST) to assess whole-person health. The MSMH app assesses strengths, challenges, and needs (SCN) for 42 concepts across four domains (My Living, My Mind and Networks, My Body, My Self-care; e.g. Income, Emotions, Pain, and Nutrition respectively). Given that emotional wellbeing was a predominant concern during the COVID-19 pandemic, we sought to understand whole-person health for participants with/without Emotions challenges for the general population.

Objective:

To use visualization techniques and data from attendees at a Midwest state fair to 1) examine SCN overall and by groups with/without Emotions challenges, 2) explore resilience of participants.

Methods:

This cross-sectional and descriptive, correlational study surveyed adult attendees at a 2021 Midwest state fair. Data were visualized using Excel and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics using SPSS.

Results:

The study participants (N=182) were primarily female (68%), aged ≥ 45 years (62%), White (85%) and non-Hispanic (97%). Compared to those without Emotions challenges, those with Emotions challenges were younger (P < .001), more often female (P = .021), and not married (P = .012). Overall, participants had more strengths (28.6 ± 10.5) than challenges (12 ± 7.5) and needs (4.2 ± 7.5). The most frequent needs were in Emotions, Nutrition, Income, Sleeping and Exercising. Compared to those without Emotions challenges, those with Emotions challenges had fewer strengths (P < .001), more challenges (P < .001), and more needs (P < .001), along with fewer strengths for Emotions (P < .001) and for cluster of Health-related Behaviors Domain concepts Sleeping (P = .002), Nutrition (P < .001) and Exercising (P < .001). Resilience was operationalized as correlations among strengths for SOST concepts; and visualized for participants with/without Emotions challenge. Those without Emotions challenges had more positive strengths correlations across multiple concepts/domains.

Conclusions:

This survey study explored a large community-generated dataset to understand whole-person health, and showed between-group differences in SCN and resilience for participants with/without Emotions challenges. It contributes to the literature regarding an app-aided and data-driven approach to whole-person health and resilience. This research demonstrates the power of health informatics and provides researchers with a data-driven methodology for additional studies to build evidence on whole-person health and resilience.