Whoso List to Find?

Seeing what Englishwomen saw in the early modern period brings them into view in a variety of new ways, many of them managed and enhanced by the machinery of cheap print. In contrast with Petrarchan poetry, which imagined women with fear and described love as plague, print established other models of health and wellness, and other ways of registering women’s powers. Women known as searchers who were charged to enter houses and locate plague rather than flee from it shared their findings with town officials who printed up statistics in weekly Bills of Mortality. The searcher was both a ‘harbinger of disaster’ and a tool of recovery, and popular ballads of the time frequently deploy her example along with her abilities to avoid ruin and register signs of life. These ballads supply alternatives to Petrarchan demographics, and I examine the ways early modern female poets draw upon their methodology, too.

Beyond the “Third Wave of Positive Psychology”: Challenges and Opportunities for Future Research

The positive psychology (PP) landscape is changing, and its initial identity is being challenged. Moving beyond the “third wave of PP,” two roads for future research and practice in well-being studies are discerned: The first is the state of the art PP trajectory that will (for the near future) continue as a scientific (sub)discipline in/next to psychology (because of its popular brand name). The second trajectory (main focus of this manuscript) links to pointers described as part of the so-called third wave of PP, which will be argued as actually being the beginning of a new domain of inter- or transdisciplinary well-being studies in its own right. It has a broader scope than the state of the art in PP, but is more delineated than in planetary well-being studies. It is in particular suitable to understand the complex nature of bio-psycho-social-ecological well-being, and to promote health and wellness in times of enormous challenges and changes. A unique cohering focus for this post-disciplinary well-being research domain is proposed. In both trajectories, future research will have to increase cognizance of metatheoretical assumptions, develop more encompassing theories to bridge the conceptual fragmentation in the field, and implement methodological reforms, while keeping context and the interwovenness of the various levels of the scientific text in mind. Opportunities are indicated to contribute to the discourse on the identity and development of scientific knowledge in mainstream positive psychology and the evolving post-disciplinary domain of well-being studies.

Designing Disease-Specific mHealth Apps for Clinical Value

mHealth apps for patient use are promising but continue to face a plateau in usage. Current apps work for a limited segment of the patient population, i.e., those who enjoy tracking for intrinsic rewards. There are many opportunities to support patient care in between health care provider visits that are not currently being met for many diseases and patient types (personas). This is an area of great potential growth for mHealth apps and could contribute greatly to patient health and wellness. In this chapter, we propose a framework for how to think about the between-visit needs of patients that would motivate continued use of mhealth apps. We view the app design process from the following perspectives: 1) disease-specific needs, 2) non-disease specific needs, 3) behavioral theoretical aspects of app usage and 4) app-intrinsic usage motivators. Myasthenia gravis serves as the use case for illustrating these perspectives and how to use them in designing a disease-specific mHealth app.

An Email Coaching Option Increases Participant Program Utilization and Coach Productivity

Purpose To assess impact of adding an email option to phone-based coaching on the number of coaching sessions completed. Design Retrospective analysis of a change in program design. Setting A health plan health and wellness coaching service. Subjects Six thousand six hundred twenty four individuals who scheduled at least one coaching session. Intervention Adding an email option to phone coaching May 1 to August 31, 2020. Measures Association of a participant using an email coaching option with completing 3 coaching sessions; overall number of participants completing 3 coaching sessions when email is offered; participant satisfaction rates; and, average number of participants coached per coach by month. Analysis χ2; linear and logistic regression with gender, age, and education as covariates. Results When we offered email coaching, 29.6% of eligible participants used the option, and compared with the same months the prior year, the proportion of participants completing 3 sessions during those months was higher (73% vs 67%). ( P < .0001) 96.5% of participants who used email, vs 92.0% who did not, completed 3 sessions before their employer’s benefit qualifying deadline. ( P < .0001) More than 85% who responded to the email coaching survey expressed satisfaction. On average, each coach served 43% (486 vs 340) more participants per month when we offered email coaching. ( P < .0001). Conclusion Adding email coaching to phone coaching can increase program utilization by individuals who use email, increase overall program utilization, generate high levels of participant satisfaction, and increase the number of participants served per coach.

Development and Validation of a Novel Microbiome-Based Biomarker of Post-antibiotic Dysbiosis and Subsequent Restoration

Background: The human gut microbiota are important to health and wellness, and disrupted microbiota homeostasis, or “dysbiosis,” can cause or contribute to many gastrointestinal disease states. Dysbiosis can be caused by many factors, most notably antibiotic treatment. To correct dysbiosis and restore healthier microbiota, several investigational microbiota-based live biotherapeutic products (LBPs) are in formal clinical development. To better guide and refine LBP development and to better understand and manage the risks of antibiotic administration, biomarkers that distinguish post-antibiotic dysbiosis from healthy microbiota are needed. Here we report the development of a prototype Microbiome Health Index for post-Antibiotic dysbiosis (MHI-A).Methods: MHI-A was developed and validated using longitudinal gut microbiome data from participants in clinical trials of RBX2660 and RBX7455 – investigational LBPs in development for reducing recurrent Clostridioides difficile infections (rCDI). The MHI-A algorithm relates the relative abundances of microbiome taxonomic classes that changed the most after RBX2660 or RBX7455 treatment, that strongly correlated with clinical response, and that reflect biological mechanisms believed important to rCDI. The diagnostic utility of MHI-A was reinforced using publicly available microbiome data from healthy or antibiotic-treated populations.Results: MHI-A has high accuracy to distinguish post-antibiotic dysbiosis from healthy microbiota. MHI-A values were consistent across multiple healthy populations and were significantly shifted by antibiotic treatments known to alter microbiota compositions, shifted less by microbiota-sparing antibiotics. Clinical response to RBX2660 and RBX7455 correlated with a shift of MHI-A from dysbiotic to healthy values.Conclusion: MHI-A is a promising biomarker of post-antibiotic dysbiosis and subsequent restoration. MHI-A may be useful for rank-ordering the microbiota-disrupting effects of antibiotics and as a pharmacodynamic measure of microbiota restoration.

Biosensors, Biofeedback, and Neurofeedback

In this chapter, the authors write about the processes of biofeedback, giving an insight about the sensors that might be used, the overall concept of biofeedback, as well as the evidence regarding the effectiveness of neurofeedback for the treatment of mental disorders.The main goal is to provide those introducing to the biofeedback as a self-regulation technique, used now for more than 50 years, with concise information about the sensors that might be used to detect the most common measured responses, the main types of physiological biofeedback, and the state-of-the-art evidence about neurofeedback as a form of brain training for individuals with the most prevalent mental disorders. Biofeedback and neurofeedback are guided therapies that include a vast and rowing variety of methodologies aimed to return information to the individual, regarding the physiological functions of the organism itself, in order to enable the modification of those otherwise considered unconscious physiological responses, designed to improve the individual's health and wellness.

Eudaemonic Design to Achieve Well-Being at Work, Wherever That May Be

The concept of eudaemonia originates from neo-Aristotelian philosophy and is associated with human flourishing. Self-determination theory, a means to attain eudaemonia, is examined here as a foundational approach to drive Eudaemonic Design--a novel design strategy that aims to achieve holistic physical, mental, and social health, or eudaemonic well-being. This chapter advances Eudaemonic Design as an architectural and organizational approach to create healthful work environments that support employee and business flourishing. The authors argue that the importance of adopting Eudaemonic Design has grown in need and complexity as work is (re)shaped by the constraints and opportunities presented by the pandemic. By contrasting dominant pre-COVID-19 Work from Office expectations against the post-COVID-19 Work from Anywhere model, this chapter explores the application of Eudaemonic Design to deliver holistic workplace well-being, rather than single variable health and wellness alone, now and into the post-COVID-19 future of work.