ATTRACTING PHYSICIANS TO THE WALK

IGED 392-02: Frontier Capstone II: Dr. A. Arya

Team 5

Zarena B. Hodge (Team Leader): Abstract, Team Information, Project Partners, and

General Formatting

Morgan Mason: Needs Statement, Conclusion and References

Aminata Jarr: Project Description, Project Design, and Power Point

Nathaniel Howard: Background Information I

Michel Egbame: Background Information II

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Abstract

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, physical activity has greatly been reduced

amongst all nationalities across the globe. The effects of job loss, loss of income, living

in isolation, and general health has led to a domino effect. Many Americans have

suffered poor mental health and depression. They have lost the desire to partake in

physical activity. Our team proposes a project to aid the Walk with a Doc, specifically

WALK/Ward 5 Health Coalition. Our goal is to create a campaign to potentially increase

participants with Walk with a Doc in the DMV region with specific focus on attracting

more physicians to the program. The latter is our attempt to emphasize that including

physicians in this program may have a domino effect towards attracting more people to

participate. We propose a campaign to encourage physicians to participate with us on

various and diverse levels.

Team Information

Zarena Hodge (Team Leader) is a non-traditional Pre-Med Senior who specializes in

healthcare, organization, and leadership.

Morgan Mason is a Senior majoring in Psychology. Ms. Mason specializes in project

data research and formatting.

Aminata Jarr is a Senior Business Management with a concentration in Finance and

Literature major. Ms. Jarr specializes in project design/description and research.

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Nathaniel Howard is a Senior majoring in English. Mr. Howard specializes in writing and

research.

Michel Egbame is a senior majoring in business management. Mr. Egbame specializes

in writing research and project review

Project Partners

Organization: Walk With a Doc, Ward 5 Health Coalition

Liaison: Jackson, Phronie, Ph.D, Executive Director of WALK/Ward 5 Health Coalition

Liaison contact: phronie.jackson@udc.edu

WALK/Ward 5 Health Coalition is a nonprofit health promotion organization. It is

based in the District of Columbia. W.A.L.K stands for Wellness=Active Lifestyle

+Knowledge. This organization has a vision to create healthy equity for all. The mission

is, " to promote health and healthy lifestyles by assessing, assuring, and developing

policies related to reducing risks of chronic disease, social determinant of health

disparities for the purpose of creating health equity.” (2021)

To accomplish this mission, the coalition gathers at a public venue and walks

with local physicians and community members. Neighbors can engage in educational

conversation with physicians while they exercise. The coalition also builds custom

developed stress management programs. During the earlier days of the pandemic, a

program titled, “Relaxation to Reduce COVID19 Stress” was released to help the

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community destress. As the coalition grows, they will need more physicians to interact

with walkers.

Need Statement

There is a great need and desire for physicians to become more active in

community programs because their involvement will convince people to join the Walk

with a Doc program. Physician involvement is critical with Walk with A Doc because

physicians will attract more patients to walk and create a domino effect of contributing to

the growth of participants in the Walk with A Doc organization. The average physician

has a patient load between 1,000-2,500 (WAD,2021). Attracting physicians will give a

higher chance of patient participation. It is important to attract physicians specifically

because they will be more willing to be involved in a health organization if it comes from

a trusted physician. A study was conducted with 48 physicians on the impact of them

contributing to the Walk with A Doc Program. Physicians reported they liked the

simplicity of the program and that it allowed them to talk about important health issues

in a welcoming relaxed setting (WAD, 2021). Physicians were able to improve

Physician-patient relationships as well.

Physicians are our focus group for attraction because they will attract the interest

of patients. This will in turn have a huge health benefit for many people and allow for the

spread of health awareness involving walking. The more physicians incorporated and

associated with the Walk with A Doc program, the more patients that will join the

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program and walk. With more patients there will be an increase in the number of walks.

Physicians are the most important challenge and focus.

Our solution on how to attract physicians to the Walk with a Doc program is by

sharing with them the benefits of working with the program. It is our hope that getting

them to be interested in the program will have an overall effect on the health of patients.

The bond between the physician and patient is a cohesive one; where the patient feels

comfortable with expressing health concerns with their doctor and wanting to be active.

Background/Significance of the Problem

In February 2020, COVID 19 started in Wuhan, China which spread throughout

China and then in the rest of the world. Most of the world decided to quarantine, thus

shutting down public spaces to prevent the spread of diseases. When COVID-19

entered the United States, similar things happened. Public spaces like schools, gyms,

and even sporting events were forced to be shut down due to the pandemic. However,

when it comes to education, especially high schools and colleges/universities, many

academic leaders decided to do social/ remote learning. Students are supposed to learn

from home during quarantine. Despite social learning being no issue, the problem is the

lack of movement or in better words, the lack of physical activity. Due to gyms and other

recreational centers being forced to shut down, staying at home causes more people to

be inactive. The inactivity is the result of the quarantine and the stay-at-home order in

the past and even now in the present. Let’s face it, people are being too lazy during the

pandemic.

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 The problem is that the lack of physical activity is limiting people when they stay

at home. The lack of movement during the pandemic causes a lack of physical activity.

It isn't people's fault that an unknown virus causes people to stay at home resulting in

curfew issues. According to the article, Lack of physical exercise during COVID-19

confinement may lead to a rise in mortality, “Scientists believe the reduction in physical

activity experienced during the first few months of the pandemic could lead to an annual

increase of more than 11.1 million in new cases of type 2 diabetes and result in more

than 1.7 million deaths.” (Reinert, 2021), The COVID 19 pandemic causes the lack of

physical activity and other actions. The point of this information is to inform people

about the effect of the pandemic and ways to fix it.

Despite the Pandemic itself causing the lack of physical activity and decline in

social events, the lack of physical activity has been a major problem before this

pandemic. There are many people that don’t workout on a regular basis before the

pandemic. While factors of work and other things cause people to not exercise, there is

a problem with the lack of physical activity. According to Matthewson, “27.5 percent, or

nearly 1.4 billion adults as the study estimates, don’t get enough exercise on a week-to-

week basis, which could lead to health problems related to inactivity down the road”

(“More than 1 in 4 people across the world don't get enough exercise, study says”,

(2018).

The lack of physical activity will often lead to serious health problems (obesity,

diabetes, heart diseases, and high blood pressure). Most of the time, it is because of

laziness.While lack of activity before the pandemic is concerning, during the pandemic

it's just as dangerous. According to the Mayo Clinic article, “How the COVID-19

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pandemic has impacted issues of obesity”, it states, “During COVID-19, we've taken

previous challenges to managing weight to another level. During the pandemic, fitness

centers have been shut down, our activity may be decreasing, or we may be working

from home and not moving as much” (Balzer 2021).

With the mixture of lack of physical activity and pandemic, the lack of exercise is

happening. The specific activity is walking. The reason walking is the focus of

discussion in our proposal is because it is the basic outdoor workout. When the COVID-

19 hits and quarantine happens, the lack of walking becomes a greater hurdle to

cross.Even before the quarantine, there was a lack of people walking daily. During the

pandemic there have been situations to the problem.

Because DC had a more severe set of policies concerning the use of indoor and

outdoor facilities, it was tough for DC residents to exercise through the pandemic.

Mayor Bowser imposed a curfew making everyone be indoors by 10 pm and made it

illegal for people to gather around in large crowds. Residents were unable to be in

public spaces if there were more than 10 people. They would be told to vacate the

premises by the police. With strict policies in place , motivation to exercise diminishes

drastically. With the world being thrown into a state of emergency and our country’s

slow response to it, panic was at high. People fearing the virus, and the lack of

accessible facilities, made it almost impossible to get anything done. Motivation and

access was affected by these factors. Due to the circumstances, DC residents had a

hard time being innovative and creative enough to come up with ways to exercise. The

curfew and policies mayor Bowser put in place weren’t the only factors in the lack of

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exercise but also the closure of schools as well. The effects trickled down to youth as

well as it is important for them to exercise.

We are choosing to only address one of the goals for Walk With A Doc due to the

potential positive domino effect that it may have on the other goals. For example,If we

get more Physicians, then we get more patients and we have more walks. Physicians

could make social media challenges to get young people to post their exercise inside of

their home. During the pandemic to get people to be active and or interact with a certain

issue, social media challenges were created. There were challenges such as the toilet

paper challenge or the wash your hand challenge where individuals had to be juggling a

soccer ball while washing their hands.

The goal is to just raise awareness on a specific issue and to make sure to

generate participation. The top 3 contestants get 100, 50 or 25 dollars gift cards from

stores and restaurants of their choice. Having youth involved is key to having a good

outreach. Teenagers and young adults circulate information like no other. So having

youth who are aware and participate in our event will guarantee increasing numbers.

Presenting physicians with data related to struggles of different communities that

they’re from to push participation. We hope to influence their participation in the walk by

making them feel like participating has a positive impact and will help their community.

Brief Project Description

The description of this project is that we want to create a paper and outreach that

helps potentially increase participants with Walk With a Doc in the DMV region with

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specific focus on attracting more Physicians to the program. The latter is our attempt to

emphasize that including physicians in this program may have a domino effect towards

attracting more people to participate. We propose a campaign to encourage Physicians

to participate with us on various and diverse levels. W.A.L.K stands for Wellness=Active

Lifestyle +Knowledge. This organization has a vision to create healthy equity for all. The

mission is, " to promote health and healthy lifestyles by assessing, assuring, and

developing policies related to reducing risks of chronic disease, social determinant of

health disparities for the purpose of creating health equity."

Physicians are our focus group for attraction because they will pull in more

patients to be interested in the program which in turn will have a huge health benefit for

many people and allow for a spread of health awareness involving walking. The

average physician has a patient load between 1,000-2,500 so we believe there is a

major influence between the physicians and the people. When COVID-19 hit the US

and all cities and states were forced to shut down including the District in May of 2020,

everything was affected by this global pandemic. Schools and Universities were a part

of this shut down which closed off sporting events, gyms, and physical activities. Many

schools resulted in remote learning which lasted for about a year and during that year

there were less and less physical activities happening with students. Despite remote

learning not being a major issue for some, the problem of lack of movement was

however becoming an issue. The inactivity being a result of the pandemic has also

helped people become more lazy, unwilling, and unhealthy. As stated earlier, there are

27.5% or nearly 1.4billion adults that do not get enough exercise on a week-to-week

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basis which can lead to excessive health issues down the road for students, so we

believe our goal is:

Goal

With us choosing to work with Walk with a Doc, there is a potential positive domino

effect on other goals. If we get more Physicians then we get more patients, then we get

more Physicians, then we get more patients, then we can have more people

doingphysical activities like walking. Creating an outreach like a hashtag or flyer is

something We believe it can be a great way to reach these students. We are currently

working on a hashtag.

Project Design

Spring 2021

January - March

Met with Dr. Phonie Jackson, Team creation and outline of proposal, Problem question

chosen, and Memo created.

April

Creation and approval of proposal outline, Project Proposal first semester completed.

May-June

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During the months of May and June, we met as a group weekly on Saturdays and went

over the proposal with Dr. Jackson as well as Dr. Arya. Each member received

feedback on their portion of the proposal, we will be making sure each person has at

least 3 paragraphs included in the proposal. We will be having another meeting with Dr.

Jackson in July

July-August

When speaking on the proposal, Nathaniel brought up a great new idea that we should

go over each other’s parts individually and give feedback to each other if we feel it is

needed so there will be a better flow throughout the paper. That section will be located

at the bottom of the proposal. As of now, we will all be working on our portions of the

proposal, Nathaniel, Morgan, and Aminata will create an outreach “hashtag” for our

proposal as well.

Goal: To attract physicians to the Walk with a Doc program to learn more from it for

patients, students, and their families.

Expected Outcome: Physicians acknowledging that they are aware of the program and

We would like to learn more about how they can help us move forward. As for the

students and staff we expect them to also become more aware about the program as

well as their health especially

this past year where there was a major shift in all our lives due to the COVID-19

pandemic.

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Conclusion

To reiterate physicians are our focus and the need in order for the project to be

successful. Without the use of Physicians it will be harder to reach patients and people

in the community in order to have successful walks. By bringing in physicians they will

benefit and so will their patients. It is important to be able to build the bond between

physicians and patients to maintain health.

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 References

Balzer , D. (2021, January 19). How the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted issues of obesity.
Mayo Clinic. https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/how-the-covid-pandemic-has-
impacted-issues-of-obesity/.

Mathewson , T. J. (2020, October 19). More than a quarter of people worldwide don't get enough
exercise. Global Sport Matters. https://globalsportmatters.com/health/2018/10/30/over-1-in-4-
people-across-the-world-dont-get-enough-exercise-study-
says/#:~:text=The%20study%20used%20data%20from,to%20inactivity%20down%20the%20road.

Reinert, H. (2021, January 19). Lack of physical exercise during COVID-19 confinement may lead
to a rise in mortality. EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-01/fda-
lop011921.php#:~:text=Scientists%20believe%20the%20reduction%20in,more%20than%201.7%2
0million%20deaths.

Our Mission. (n.d.). Retrieved July 10, 2021, from http://www.walkward5.org/home.html

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