Seton Health Synergy Group
The current Synergy Group is a collaboration with the Seton Health Network to work on regional health issues. Among the specific topics being discussed are ways to address the need for a regional perspective on health, increasing and sustaining participation in the Insure-a-Kid program, and mapping and strengthening a network of relationships between Seton and UT.
Participants in the group have included VP's at Seton; the Director of the Insure-a-Kid program; Deans and Faculty from UT; PhD and MA students from UT in areas such as sociology, psychology, advertising, public affairs; Development Officers from UT; members of the Corporate Community in Austin; Management Consultants; and private citizens with relevant expertise. The composition of the group will continue to evolve as different topics and projects emerge and as new participants become involved.
Faculty, graduate students, and members of the public and private sectors who wish to learn more about this project and become involved should contact Dr. Thomas Darwin (tdarwin@mail.utexas.edu; 512-232-7904).
For the Fall (2002), the Synergy Group project is a collaboration among faculty, the Intellectual Entrepreneurship Program, administrators from the Seton Health Network, graduate students, and undergraduates. Specifically, it involves graduate students from several disciplines (including communication studies, nursing, advertising, kinesiology, and health education) who are pursuing a number of research projects to understand factors that govern the over-utilization of the Emergency Room in local hospitals. These research projects are part of a Health Communication course taught by Dr. Rajiv Rimal in the Department of Communication Studies. Graduate students are working in teams and each graduate student also is mentoring one undergraduate student. Four teams, each comprised of three graduate and three undergraduate students, are engaged in this project. One team is focusing on patient attitudes as potential barriers to ER use. Another team is focusing on provider issues -- how physicians, nurses, and other health care providers perceive this issue. A third team is studying community resources that are available for local residents that either facilitate or hinder access to health care. A fourth team is studying how messages can be designed to appeal to different segments of the ER-user population. The overall goal is to understand the nature of issues surrounding access to health care. This project is designed to train graduate students to conduct hands-on research and to provide them with mentoring and teambuilding skills. Undergraduate students, selected according to their interest in pursuing graduate education, are learning about how research is conducted and how their research can make valuable contributions to society.