Priscilla Pemu

Doctor, Educator/Teacher, Global soul, Parent

As an academic general internist with a focus on improving the health and wellbeing of my patients and others like them who live with one or more chronic diseases; I understood early on that an individual's ability to understand and manage their daily health behaviors had significant impact on their health outcomes. As such, I have worked for the past 12 years within a multi disciplinary team to develop and implement a technology application for enhancing self management skills. We have implemented this application among individuals traditionally regarded as high-risk or difficult to reach with some success. This success is based in part on the understanding that our population needs a 'high touch' in order to engage with 'high tech'. During this TED Residency, I intend to dig into the record of conversations between our health coaches and participants in order to understand what worked in those interactions and what did not work. I suspect that culturally congruent communication is a big part of this but will let the data show us what it has. Chronic diseases are common across the world and do account for significant disability, reduced life expectancy and cost.The outcome of this work has wide application not just within the United States but across the world especially in 'resource limited' settings as a way to empower the individual with the knowledge and skill needed to manage their health and ultimately, improve health outcomes. This work has received funding from the Microsoft Bewell Fund, The National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities and National Center for Advancing Translational Science of the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association Strategically Focused Research Network on Health Disparities.

I am passionate and purposeful about improving the health outcomes of my patients, many of whom have the challenge we are addressing. I have researched this for the past 12 years as part of a multidisciplinary group and I am excellent at simplifying complex ideas. I have learnt that motivation can be unlocked during culturally congruent coaching and would love the opportunity to explore this further with experts in culture and motivation.

Although behavioral change improves health outcomes by 30%; individuals with chronic diseases, complicated by the presence of adverse social determinants of health do not benefit. Healthcare is limited in providing appropriate support for self management skills development for behavioral change. We have developed a technology application coupled with culturally congruent coaching to address this.

Academic General Internal Medicine, Clinical Research, Community Engagement

Crafts; Gardening