Associate Professor of Psychology Erin Henshaw has been given Denison’s R.C. Good award. This is a one-semester release from teaching responsibilities for faculty to focus solely on completion of a major research project.
The project Henshaw has been working on is a text message program designed to help first time mothers meet their goal of breastfeeding their baby for the first six weeks postpartum. The program is designed to help build mothers’ confidence, or self-efficacy, in their ability to manage the challenges and stresses that often come with breastfeeding and new parenthood. The program is currently being tested at OhioHealth hospitals with the collaboration of partners Marie Cooper (Director of Nursing, Riverside Methodist Hospital, OhioHealth) and Teresa Wood, (OhioHealth Nursing Research Program Manager). Funding for the project has been provided by a grant through the OhioHealth Foundation.
Henshaw wrote that many of her students have been involved in the phases of research leading up to this time, contributing to data collection, data analysis, protocol refinement, and co-authoring papers. She stated, “It has been a joy for me to work with this great group of students”!
After analyzing this next round of data, she will be summarizing manuscripts regarding the project’s outcome and hopes that the findings will contribute to the scientific conversation about how to support the health and wellbeing of new parents and their babies.
