UAMS wins grant to create app for wellness

Researchers at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) have been awarded a $10,000 grant to create an app that promotes wellness and healthy living habits in Arkansas students.

The grant comes from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, after UAMS was selected one of 10 winners nationally in the Using Technology to Prevent Childhood Obesity in Low-Income Families and Communities Challenge.

“This award gives us the ability to enhance what we’re already doing to teach students about living a healthy lifestyle at an early age and combat some problems down the road,” said Alan Faulkner, program manager for the UAMS Centers for Distance Health.

The app will serve as a portal to HealthyNOW, a web-based effort to deliver exercise videos and nutritional counseling to students. Additionally, researchers want to include games and rewards to make the app more fun to use. They also want it to give students a direct link to fitness and nutrition experts through the UAMS Dietetics program and its HealthyNOW partner, the University of Central Arkansas’ Exercise Science program.

HealthyNOW is part of the School Telemedicine in Arkansas (STAR) program, which began in 2016 with a $1.2 million grant from the HRSA.

It was launched to combat health disparities in four rural Arkansas school districts: Magazine, Lamar, Jasper and Malvern. The first year of the STAR grant focused on behavioral health and was designed to provide on-the-spot care for students in need of annual assessments and medication management using real-time video conferencing. In the current school year, STAR launched a teledentistry program in the four school districts.