Butler University’s open access healthcare journal, BU Well, launched the first volume of the novel multimedia healthcare review journal on May 13, featuring nine articles on topics from the light in your environment affecting health to financial wellness to phone apps that help track daily well-being.
The website for the open-access journal will be available on Butler University Digital Commons website: http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/buwell/.
BU Well publishes multimedia healthcare articles in three formats per article: print; an informational YouTube interview video vignette with the primary author of the print article; and an infographic of top-line information from each article. Items two and three are created by students working on the BU Well editorial team once an article is accepted for publication.
“BU Well is one of the nation’s only peer reviewed multimedia healthcare journals,” said Anne Leighty, Editor-in-Chief for the 2016-2017 school year. “This experience allows students to view and edit the work of their peers and then use their own ideas and thoughts on a topic to create an infographic and interview. This opportunity allows students to work on technical things like writing and editing, but then also on their creativity when designing an infographic and interview questions.”
This journal is run by about 30 students, representing four of the six colleges on Butler’s campus. There is also an external advisory board that includes professionals in healthcare and healthcare law, and founding executive editor Erin Albert, Associate Professor of Pharmacy Practice and faculty advisor for BU Well.
Functioning in teams, these Butler scholars have the chance to enhance their writing and editing abilities and promote more awareness on prominent healthcare information to the Butler community. Student duties include constructing, collaborating, and circulating various scholarly articles gathered from other faculty, alumni, and professionals in the healthcare field.
The project was created through a Butler Innovation Fund Grant written by Albert and Dean Mary Graham of COPHS.
For the next year, the second volume has a theme of the Future of Healthcare and will start accepting submissions starting August 18 on a rolling basis until December 16. BU Well invites submissions of original and scholarly healthcare articles for publishing consideration from any geographic location, and at any level of healthcare: students, residents, faculty, healthcare professionals, and others.
More is at BU Well’s Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/BUWellJournal, and Twitter (@BUWellJournal).
Nine articles are to be published in this first volume on Wellness. Some focus on improving the workplace of current healthcare to improve wellness in the community: “Improving collaboration between pharmacists and physicians”; “What’s app? Using evidence-based medicine smartphone applications in healthcare practice”; “Making an employee wellness program work for you”; and “Revolutionizing the patient package insert with infographics.”
On the other side, one article evaluates the downside to a society focused on wellness: “The social implications of wellness industry as a commodity.”
Others looked at how your individual characteristics can affect your health: “What you ignore at work may harm you: the effects of light, design and nature”; “Mysteries of your blood”; and “Financial wellness in undergraduate students.”
One student even had a personal narrative: “An N of One: my review of management of type 1 diabetes, myself as the patient.”
Media contact:
Marc Allan
mallan@butler.edu
317-940-9822