The Whole Person Health Initiative in Action
Whole Person Health Across the College
The Whole Person Health Initiative in Action
The Whole Person Health Initiative demonstrates the Morrison Family College of Health values in action. Through our Whole Person Health Faculty Fellows Program, Interprofessional Education opportunities, and community-based student learning, we are weaving whole person health into course content, faculty research, and college culture.
Our new fellows program was designed to create opportunities for faculty to engage in research, curricular development, or programmatic work that aligns with the initiative's focus on advancing health equity through whole person care. Read below to meet our 2024-2025 faculty fellows.
Focus area: Disseminate research on underlying factors contributing to community violence and strengthen partnerships with local entities working to reduce gun violence
Focus area: Increase awareness of grief literacy through events, publications, and international research
Focus area: Increase capacity in the Interprofessional Center for Counseling and Legal Services by developing additional student training opportunities and a postdoctoral fellowship
Congratulations to our 2025-2026 faculty fellows: Dr. Noah Gagner, Dr. Tanya Rand, and Amy Smith.
The Interprofessional Center for Counseling and Legal Services (IPC) has expanded its student training opportunities to include case studies where students from social work, psychology, nursing, and law programs explored ways to respond to complex patient/client health and social service needs and learn about how to effectively manage secondary trauma. The IPC also deepened its partnership with the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT), providing short-term case management services to clients on CVT’s waitlist for more intensive services and launching a peer support group attended by 15 community members that was co-led by CVT staff and Morrison Family College of Health graduate students. Overall, the 14 psychology and 10 social work students who were trained at the IPC provided over 2,000 appointments for 134 unique clients and 50 additional nursing students participated in training activities hosted by the IPC.
The Morrison Family College of Health and the Whole Person Health Initiative jointly developed a concept paper defining whole person health and the core knowledge and skills needed across academic programs. This framework is incorporated into new staff orientation, informs course and program reviews, and prioritizes future professional development and continuing education.
