Project Overview

MOSPF provided funds to bring online group music therapy to McMaster University undergraduate students as a means to proactively manage stress and anxiety. As of October 2020, online group music therapy became a proactive wellness option and data has been collected to explore its efficacy in managing stress and anxiety.

Project Performance and Outcome

The project has successfully made online group music therapy available to undergraduate students at McMaster University. The sessions were delivered online opposed to the original application which proposed in-person group music therapy. Online group music therapy has been provided to a total of 26 undergraduate students, and a total of 22 online group music therapy sessions have been facilitated. A total of 11 online verbal therapy groups were facilitated as part of this project. As a result of funding later received from the Milne McGrath Hamilton Community Foundation, we were able to cover additional costs and the cost of the analysis of the cortisol. Data collected from students in the music therapy groups were compared to data from the standard of care and to 12 students in a control group (no interventions). Our preliminary results thus far indicate that online group music therapy reduces the experience of stress and anxiety as measured by standardized psychometric tools and cortisol. Additionally, attendance was the highest in the music therapy groups in comparison to the verbal-based groups.

Comments

We are grateful for the support of McMaster Okanagan Special Project Funding. As students transition back to campus, and we continue to navigate the fall out of the pandemic, proactive mental health supports will continue be paramount.We plan to continue offering online group music therapy in the Summer and Fall semester, 2021 and to continue gathering data.

Project Overview

The Student Success Centre and Mac’s Money Centre hosted a Financial Reality Expo as part of Financial Literacy Month in November. The objective of this event was to educate students about financial planning, including issues such as budgeting, credit, identity theft prevention, investing, saving, student loans, financial aid, awards and more. 

Events

1. Financial Wellness Webinars: Finding Ways to Save, Coping with Financial Stress, How to Deal with Debt, How to Build a Strong Credit Score, How to Use Credit Cards Effectively.
2. Money, You and COVID-19 (Instagram Live): November 12, 11:00 a.m. – 11:40 a.m. Instagram Live on @MacSSC hosted a candid conversation to discuss how COVID-19 has impacted your finances over the past eight months. What have been some of the challenges? What have we learned about our relationship with money? Our guest host, Rubina Ahmed-Haq, personal finance expert and news personality, will answered questions live and helped us discover how we can improve our relationship with money.
3. Financial Goals for 2021 January 7, 11:00 a.m. – 11:40 a.m. Instagram Live on @MacSSC with guest Rubina Ahmed-Haq, personal finance expert and news personality talking about all the ways to deal with holiday debt and how students (and all of us) can better manage our money in 2021. 

Project Performance and Outcome

Events supported student health by providing students with resources to reduce financial stress and gain confidence in their financial decision-making skills. The project saw 39 attendees. 

The Grad-Visory-Participatory Action Team for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Graduate School’s goal was to organize a stakeholder advisory group with/of/and for graduate students with disabilities and other diverse, intersecting identities. The ‘Grad-Visory’ intended to build community and mobilize change by informing equity, diversity, and inclusion strategies and student experience programming. The group collectively produced a set of Five Key Take-Aways and Action Steps to support the university’s EDI implementation strategy, which summarizes the primary concerns, perspective, and recommendations from the graduate students involved.  

Just Walk: Hamilton-Burlington is a not-for-profit McMaster led community walking program led by local healthcare professionals and McMaster University staff and students. Since September of 2018, Just Walk has facilitated free, fun, and supervised weekly walk events in both Hamilton and Burlington, where each walk begins with a an informative 5-minute health-related discussion delivered by a healthcare professional, followed by a walk led by student volunteers. By pairing health education with supervised walking opportunities, Just Walk: Hamilton-Burlington aims to make credible health information and safe opportunities to exercise more accessible to individuals living in our area.

The McMaster Okanagan Special Project Fund was able to provide money towards the creation of a McMaster-hosted website for our Just Walk program.

The Just Walk website as a stand-alone resource has allowed us to get information out to the McMaster community and the public regarding the benefits of active living, and specifically walking and hiking.

Project Overview

The Student Sustainability Ambassadors Program (SSAP) was born in January 2020 when it was identified that McMaster student sustainability initiatives co-exist in silos. Through funding from the Okanagan Special Project Fund, SSAP was developed jointly by Hospitality Services and the Academic Sustainability Programs (ASP) Office. The mission of SSAP is to support student leadership, action, experiential learning, personal and professional development, and collaboration focused on sustainability. To achieve this mission, SSAP provides a virtual platform (a private Facebook group) where students can come to connect, collaborate, share and gain resources, and grow as sustainability leaders in their communities.

Project Overview

During the ‘20-’21 academic year, McMaster University Library’s Sustainability Committee hosted monthly events with the goal of involving our campus community in learning about and taking action to live more sustainably. These virtual events were a way to meet new people and connect with the McMaster community, even when we could not physically be on campus. We offered opportunities to learn about Indigenous environmental activists in Canada, practice habits for sustainable lifestyles, to learn about historical conceptualizations of environmental action, and learned about the impact of growing a native plant garden, as well as taught participants how to get started with their new seed packets.  

Project Performance and Outcome

Our goal was to provide opportunities to learn about sustainability and climate change, and through highlighting library resources such as documentaries, experts ranging from professors, archivists, and PhD candidates, through live workshops and events as well as through the creation of resources that could be interacted with at participants leisure through social media, library guides, and more, we met our goal. 

Project Overview

Resident Affairs and Concerts in Care Ontario joined forces create a series of professional development events under the banner “Music – The Forgotten Pillar of Mental Health.” Dr. John Miller of McMaster Resident Affairs developed the concept to address ongoing stress and mental health issues among his constituents. 

Objectives

1. To expose the medical community and especially resident learners to the concept that music has a central role in our social network, our social growth and fundamental as to how we communicate. Music has an impact on our mental health, our trust, our memory, and our mood.  
2. To develop a model for future interaction amongst involved partners promoting research and interest in this field. 

The concert-lecture format was chosen to showcase both expert speakers and select musicians who would work together to demonstrate current strategies that combine music and medicine. 

The series was to take place in person, in both McMaster’s LiveLab and in clinical settings in the Spring 2020. Covid-19 ended that prospect. However, five concert-lectures were presented online via Zoom in November 2020 and February-March 2021. Three of the concert-lectures were recorded and are posted on both the Concerts in Care Ontario website and on the PGME- Residents’ Affairs website.

Speakers and musicians reported positive experiences and excellent learning, and the series took advantage of new technology to overcome restrictions on musicians performing in the same space with each other and speakers working simultaneously. 

Project Performance and Outcome

This pilot project successfully presented 5 aspects of music as a pillar of mental health. Expert leaders in the field discussed their clinical programs where music had been integrated into patient care programs.   

We drew on our personal and professional connections to bring together presenters from provincial and national programs, as well as talented well-known musicians who worked well with the presenters to create a musical setting for a broad exchange of ideas and discussion. The sessions offered personal experience for the residents, as the experts shared how they had created programs for communities and for clinical environments.  

Project Overview

The project was designed to encourage and support students, staff, and faculty in adopting an active and sustainable transport mode for trips connecting McMaster, surrounding neighbourhoods, and other Hamilton destinations. The project was led by McMaster’s Multi-Modal Transportation Advisory Committee which is comprised of a broad range of campus stakeholders, including students, faculty, staff representatives, and community partners. The Committee’s aim is to encourage active and sustainable mobility among students, faculty, and staff through education, programming, and policy change. 

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically altered programming on campus, with the suspension of in-person non-essential or extracurricular activities being in place as of March 2020. Furthermore, few students were living on or near campus since both terms had complete remote learning. 

Project Performance and Outcome

Most of the project’s intended goals were successfully achieved. It is important to note that these goals are multiyear and ongoing. MOSPF enabled the Multi-Modal Transportation Advisory Committee to accomplish important progress towards promoting active and sustainable travel at McMaster, which laid the foundation for continued work in years to come.

Create and disseminate an active transportation map: The Multi-Modal Transportation Advisory Committee’s Vice-Chair (Elise Desjardins) mentored a student group through SUSTAIN 3S03: Implementing Sustainable Change. The students surveyed other students to identify popular destinations that students want to reach by bicycle. They then developed several online cycle maps to those destinations through Ride With GPS, which are featured on the Student Wellness Centre’s website.

Revitalize an active transportation website as a hub of information and resources: Information and resources related to active transportation is scarce on McMaster’s webpages. Therefore, the Multi-Modal Transportation Advisory Committee identified a need for a “one-stop shop” where students, faculty, and staff could access information about cycling. The website was developed using MOSPF and features a variety of topics related to cycling (e.g., benefits, safety, bike handling, cycle routes and maps, and local/provincial resources). The online hub is currently featured on the Student Wellness Centre’s website.

Offer cycling education programming: The project completed one virtual bike repair session with New Hope Community Bikes in November 2020. This workshop helped 7 students develop knowledge for ongoing bike maintenance. We also offered a subsidy for bike tools, which 1 student purchased. Although attendance was significantly lower than outlined in the initial application, the Multi-Modal Transportation Advisory Committee was impressed by interest in this virtual session given that most students were not located in Hamilton over the past year or were not cycling regularly. 

Ran through: CanChild Centre for Childhood Disability Research.

When a student arrives at McMaster University, they usually face a transition into adulthood that is accompanied by a shift in social demands and cultural values/expectations. Importantly, how youth adapt to these various challenges has the potential to influence their health and well-being.

While all young people have to manage their own health, for some this may be harder than for others. For example, when young people with chronic conditions or special healthcare needs transition to adult services without preparation or good support, students may face 1) an increased incidence of adverse experiences of care and poor health outcomes, 2) costly hospitalizations, 3) inequity of healthcare services, and 4) “other” costs, i.e. missed post-secondary education/work opportunities (Tuchman et al 2015). We believe that the bulk of these adverse outcomes are preventable.

MyTransition App, a transition toolkit designed to support youth/young adults as they move from pediatric to adult healthcare, was developed at McMaster University in consultation with various stakeholders and informed by research evidence. Testing amongst youth/young adults with chronic health conditions indicates that improvements to the app, including reminders, calendars and goal setting, could enhance its usability. Funding from the McMaster Okanagan Special Project will allow us to add features and support healthcare self-management amongst all McMaster students with or without special healthcare needs.