Notes on Resilience
Conversations about trauma, resilience, and compassion.
How do we genuinely support individuals who have experienced trauma and build inclusive and safe environments? Trauma significantly affects the mental and physical health of those who experience it, and personal resiliency is only part of the solution. The rest lies in addressing organizational, systemic, and social determinants of health and wellness, and making the effort to genuinely understand the impact of trauma.
Here, we ask and answer the tough questions about how wellness is framed in an organizational context, what supports are available and why, what the barriers are to supporting trauma survivors, and what best practices contribute to mental wellness. These conversations provide a framework to identify areas for change and actionable steps to reshape organizations to be truly trauma sensitive.
Notes on Resilience
94: Technology and Well-Being: Enhancing Inclusivity, with Dr. Jereme Wilroy
What if technology could enhance not just productivity, but also deepen our human connections?
Join me and Dr. Jereme Wilroy, an associate professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, in the next episode in our technology and well-being series as we unravel the intricate dance between technological advancement and well-being.
Jereme discusses how assistive technologies can transform lives and emphasizes the importance of personal interactions in our increasingly digital world. Our conversation also examines the challenges we faced maintaining connections during the pandemic, a time when digital communication became both a lifeline and a barrier.
Ever wondered how technology can bridge generational gaps and foster inclusivity? We talk about tailoring communication preferences and using tools like video conferencing, email, and messaging platforms to enhance productivity and accessibility across different age groups; and the necessity of assessing digital literacy and accessibility needs to ensure technology serves to unify rather than divide.
Setting boundaries in our technology-driven lives is crucial for maintaining our well-being. Jereme helps us understand the balance between leveraging technology for productivity and preserving our mental health. Tune in for insightful discussions that promise to enrich your perspective on technology's role in human connection and productivity.
Dr. Jereme Wilroy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His research focuses on the design and testing of exercise trials in populations of disability. He is the Co-director of the UAB Spinal Cord Injury Model Systems, overseeing a study looking at changes in gut microbiome during first year of spinal cord injury; and Director of Research at Lakeshore Foundation, a non-profit aimed to empower individuals with disability to live an active lifestyle. Lakeshore is a state-of-the-art, universally designed fitness and recreation center and a U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training site. Dr. Wilroy is also founding program director for the UAB Disability Health Studies Graduate Certificate and the behavior health expert for the National Center on Health Physical Activity and Disability.
You can learn more about the Jereme at the Continuum Lab or reach him via email at jdwilroy@uab.edu.
Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.
Producer / Editor: Neel Panji
Invite Manya to inspire and empower your teams + position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in fostering resilience and trauma sensitivity.
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The purpose of technology for productivity is to create more time for us, and not just to get more done. I think we have to focus on that, because what happens is people will automate things and then think, oh, now I have more time to do more, and so it's sort of a never ending cycle of continuing to pile more, and I'm absolutely guilty of this as well. But I think seeing technology as a means to create more time and not just get more done, Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience.
Manya Chylinski:I'm your host, Manya Chylinski. Today I was speaking with Dr Jereme Wilroy, who is an associate professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the executive director of the Continuum Lab. His research focuses on design and testing of exercise trials in populations of disability. He and I chatted for this new series on technology and well-being, about using technology as a gateway.
Manya Chylinski:And what is the purpose of technology in our lives and how can we think about using technology while still protecting our well-being and our humanness? It's a pretty interesting episode. Thanks for joining us, Jereme. Thank you so much for being here. I'm really excited to chat with you today.
Jereme Wilroy:Absolutely. It's great to be part of this.
Manya Chylinski:Hey, before we dig into the topic of technology and well-being, the question I start with for everyone if you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be and why?
Jereme Wilroy:Interesting question for me, just because I'm not necessarily a history buff, but for some reason the name that popped in my mind was Franklin Roosevelt, and one of the reasons for this was because of having had polio myself as a wheelchair user. Just seeing someone who is in such a huge role. Of course, he was a great leader. He served three full terms and was elected for a fourth term, led us through the Great Depression and World War II and all these things, but he managed to do that as a person with a disability. He was very productive, so I'd ask him a lot of questions about how do you have such a sustainable career and all of that?
Manya Chylinski:Yes, oh, I think that's great and I say this every time somebody says this, but I wish I could make it happen for you and I wish I could be a fly on the wall when you guys were chatting, because I bet there's some really great insights there and it was such a different time If you're thinking about awareness of people with disabilities and awareness of wheelchair users. So I bet he would also be hopefully impressed to see some of the advances that we've made.
Jereme Wilroy:Absolutely Hopefully so, and it's an interesting point because one of the things was he was never really photographed in his wheelchair and stuff, and so, yeah, it would be a very interesting conversation on multiple fronts, including the technology piece as well, and how to be productive in an age without all this technology and stuff.
Manya Chylinski:Well, there's that, and some of us are old enough to remember at least a little bit of time without all this technology, remember at least a little bit of time without all this technology, and we managed to make it work, whereas today, sometimes, a piece of software, a piece of technology doesn't work the way we want it to.
Jereme Wilroy:It feels like we've just been completely thwarted, absolutely.
Manya Chylinski:So, you know, we do live in a time when technology is just really integrated with our lives and therefore with our well-being. So, in your opinion, how can we be making sure that these technological advancement complement our lives and don't remove the humanness from who we are?
Jereme Wilroy:Absolutely. I think this is a great question. I think it's something that we all probably wrestle with each day and for me, the first thought that comes to mind is just to simply that we need to prioritize and value connection with others. I think there's a lot in the mental health space now that just talks about the value of simply being around other human beings, being in the room. If we're talking about thousands of years ago, we're around a campfire, telling stories, and just that presence of another person there to not feel alone.
Jereme Wilroy:I think there's been just an epidemic of loneliness that's come out, and in my area in research, there's been more grant funding opportunities to just try to understand loneliness in this day and age. So I think just simply prioritizing that and making sure that we're going into the workplace, even though I have the technology to do everything I need to from home, I know that my team they've told me they value me being there. I wanted today to go to one of my students' presentations, like in person. So I think just being with people is really important. It's important for our bodies and our minds just to be around others.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, absolutely, and I think the pandemic was many things, but one thing it did, I think, is bring light to some of these issues about loneliness and, while the technology enabled us to stay connected in ways we hadn't before, it was also a very isolating time, and I think we now recognize the limits of technology.
Jereme Wilroy:Definitely. I think it's a great way to stay connected when we, of course, can't be in person, you know, and when we do need to work from home or whatever it may be. But still definitely getting back to being more in person, I know that's been a transition for a lot of people to try to get back into new routines.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, absolutely. I'm one of those people who's trying to figure out how to transition back. When I think about technology, my mind goes to immediately social media and Zoom and conferencing software like you and I are talking on today, but that is just the tip of the iceberg of the kind of technologies we have available to us. There are health-related technologies and assistive devices for people with disabilities. Talk to me a little bit about where we are in terms of that. What are some of the things that we're doing that are amazing and what are some of the things that are on the horizon?
Jereme Wilroy:Yeah, I think that's a great question and so my research the ways that we're using it. We are using Zoom or different video conferencing to interact with people for health coaching or demonstrating exercise, and I actually had one of my students present today about how, although Zoom fatigue is a very real thing you know we're jumping from meeting to meeting that we actually found that with some of these health promotion programs and especially around exercise, that participants didn't really report much Zoom fatigue. I think because they were active and engaged in the program, that it didn't affect them as much as maybe just sitting there on a meeting all day.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, yes, and I think we've also learned to adapt and not do that thing we were all doing at the beginning of the pandemic, which was schedule six meetings in a row with no breaks between them.
Jereme Wilroy:Absolutely, and so other things we use it for is for monitoring, whether it's heart rate or activity, so that we can be able to track that as part of the program and then help helping people, coach them to better health and better wellness. I think what's really on the horizon is a growth in this sort of digital monitoring. You know, with the age of big data and using AI and machine learning to help give those insights, especially in medicine. Now you know they can do these scans and there's so much data that in the past wasn't used, but now they can use all this data to come up with a lot of strategies or maybe discovering conditions that people may have that need to be treated, and so the more and more I think that as we move into this digital age and big data, we'll be able to give people more insights about their health and maybe even more encouragement for certain health habits and stuff like that.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, and I think that is amazing and, from my perspective, one of the real positive uses of technology. I was just chatting with somebody who was talking about this device. That's the size of a grain of rice, that they can install and it does all these things. I won't go into the details, but I just thought it's so amazing to live in a world where we can do these things and help people monitor their health or what have you. What are some concerns about privacy or things that could go wrong with these kinds of technologies?
Jereme Wilroy:Yeah, privacy is always a concern. We always put that in our consent form and I think it's really a thing that the general public has a lot of concern about. And there's a bit of a trust issue when it comes to research and it's really affecting research across the board. And so I think being able to ensure that that data is private and really de-identified because at the end of the day, we've almost seen where no data is private Every major corporation has been hit and had their data leaked and all of that stuff.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, although I just don't feel like I want to get to a place where we just assume that nothing is private, but it feels like we're moving in that direction.
Jereme Wilroy:Right, absolutely. I mean the ways that our phones track us all the time. You know, and you have to be pretty educated to go through and know which settings to change or turn off or different things. I mean, my wife has never really used the fingerprint scanner or the face scanner or anything like that on her phone because she just just she wants to avoid that as much as possible.
Manya Chylinski:So yes, she is not alone. I know other people who feel the very same way. Amazing technologies that we're talking about are creating new technologies all the time to improve efficiency, to improve productivity, to improve tracking and getting data. And how can we ensure that those kind of developments are prioritizing, I guess, our humanness in all of this?
Jereme Wilroy:Yeah, I think that's a really great question and I think one thing is hopefully they're using more people and users to give feedback about it, because I think there's been a lot when it comes to technology development that it's about generating money, so there hasn't seemed to be as much of a concern from the tech companies when it comes to developing it, because it's about getting people's attention and creating profiles and all of that.
Jereme Wilroy:I think it really comes to organizations that need to sort of step up to make sure that they're protecting their employees and they're protecting their workers or whatever that they're giving access to technology to better perform their job. Even here At my university, they talk about wellness a lot and they talk about digital health and ways to do that, and so if they can't, if the organization can't necessarily control whether they're accessing certain social media or something, they can hopefully at least provide some education and training on using this for improving their mental health and well-being, because we know people that have good mental health and well-being are going to perform better and are going to remain more loyal and be able to sustain their career at the organization.
Manya Chylinski:Right, absolutely, and I think about you know you mentioned that the organization has some responsibility here and I think about that a lot that we have personal responsibility for our own behavior and our own reactions to things. It feels sometimes like so much of the responsibility gets pushed down to us as individuals that you need to have the right settings on your phone and have the right privacy things and you are expected to have read the thousand page privacy policy and know what that means in terms of what's happening to your data. I'm not sure I even have a question there. I just feel like sometimes it gets pushed down to us as individuals. So I'm pleased to hear you talking about the organization has at least some responsibility.
Jereme Wilroy:Absolutely, Absolutely, Because at the end of the day they've said it, my department chair said it here we spend probably more time at work than we do with our families, and so he likes to call us family, you know. And so I think it's important to take care of your work family, of your own people that you spend most of your time with, especially for individuals that are in the healthcare setting and working closely together or whatever setting it may be, just to be able to provide for them and stuff like that during that time.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, in fact, I recently read a statistic that our managers have essentially the same effect on our mental health as a spouse or a partner does because we spend so much time in our workplaces. So I'm glad that you brought that up. And technology can be a really powerful tool for inclusion, but it can also create barriers and there still is a digital divide and digital literacy is not uniform across the board. So how can we ensure that digital health initiatives or these digital workplace initiatives are inclusive and accessible?
Jereme Wilroy:And that's a really great question because it's definitely challenging to answer for everyone. We want to come up with these sort of broad solutions, but it really depends on the person and sort of tailoring it to their needs. I think that there's technology and tools that can be offered for people to use. However, I think alternatives can be provided as well, and we often try to do that in our own programs or health promotion programs that we provide, even if it's really using some sort of technology as a gateway to improve people's health, to get them back to in-person participation or being involved on site doing certain programs. So same with work. Even if people need to work remotely for a period of time and using technology for that, helping to get them back into the workplace and back around others, is always valued.
Manya Chylinski:We still are in a time in the world where we've got people with such vastly different experiences of digital technologies. We've got, you know, the younger generations who grew up with a cell phone in their hand and grew up with the internet, and we've got older generations who grew up in a completely different environment where, you know, they had a party line telephone and now, you know, we have our telephones in our hands. So I guess I also think about how are we inclusive across that range of experience?
Jereme Wilroy:Yeah, and we've experienced a lot of this in our programs, and I would say even that there can be a difference between people in different generations.
Jereme Wilroy:However, I think you'll find people in every generation that doesn't digitally deliver it, that still struggle, and the funny thing is you'll find people those people that struggle with it often have the most challenges. So what we will look at and say you know that they're having these problems, and find out they're literally having those problems with the tablet not working or the monitoring device not picking up, even though they're doing all the right things, and so continue to provide the support they need, but, again, providing different options for those individuals, especially around communication. I think communication technology is a big one, so, whether it's through Zoom or through text messaging or phone or email, just finding out what people's preferences are and that's some of the work that we're doing how can we sort of create some tools finding out what people's preferences are? Yes, and that's some of the work that we're doing. How can we sort of create some tools to help identify people's preferences, to help them be the most successful, whatever it is they need to do?
Manya Chylinski:Yes, and it can be very frustrating when you're communicating with somebody who has complete like somebody who just likes to text, but you really like to talk on the phone and that disparity can cause a lot of frustration. I've experienced that myself. Interesting, okay, so can I ask what kind of technologies are most useful to you in your work and in your research?
Jereme Wilroy:Yeah. So I would say using Zoom has been very beneficial, of course, for different meetings and presentations, and then also using it in our research to deliver the health coaching or the exercise programs. So using any sort of video conferencing technology, using apps so we develop apps for our different programs to try to help deliver video content to people and a way for them to sort of message and stuff like that. So, and again, really going back to the whole messaging thing, I know a lot of people get into messaging on social media and so they get into different things or using things like Teams or Slack, which I've never figured out. Slack, I've never went up it. I always get lost on how to get in one conversation and really I don't understand it.
Manya Chylinski:So, yeah, I'm so glad that you say that. My experience, I think, is quite similar in that tool. How do you guys measure the impact of technology, like on the folks you're involving in research or on your employees?
Jereme Wilroy:Yeah, so we do use certain tools to be able to like surveys to assess whether it's digital literacy or any issues that they may have with using technology, as well as just learning more about the accessibility of it.
Jereme Wilroy:Like we talked about before, being inclusive and at the end of the day, for that I think it's really about being aware and asking people what they need. Oftentimes, I think it can be where organizations might be putting too much effort if people don't really need it. But be able to have the accessibility of closed captioning or making sure that the emails are readable using a reader and stuff like that I think are important. And then also just having different tools as far as in the workplace that can actually measure people's use of their technology, whether it's how much time they're on email or even on the calendar, scheduling times and stuff like that. We will often share our calendars where you can't necessarily see the event but you kind of see how full people's schedules are, or something like that. And then a lot of tools within Microsoft for using like insights and stuff to know how much time were you spending out the normal work week hours or something like that. So a lot of tools and ways that we can sort of assess people's use of technology.
Manya Chylinski:What are you most looking forward to on the horizon in terms of technology, in whatever realm, like what it can enable people to do, how it's going to move us forward as a society? Just curious if you've got something on your radar screen that you're really excited about.
Jereme Wilroy:One thing is really around big data and using AI and stuff. Now, this is not necessarily my area. I kind of benefit from the research and all that's developing these tools, but really using it for means of productivity, being able to sort of have this own personal assistant and be able to take all of this information which I think they say every day. There's just so much information that's uploaded, you'll never get to see all of it, so but being able to use these tools to sort of summarize and get the information you need, I think it will also be beneficial for again being more productive.
Jereme Wilroy:But one thing that I wanted to say about that was how the purpose of technology for productivity is to create more time for us and not just to get more done. I think we have to focus on that, because what happens is people will automate things and then think, oh, now I have more time to do more, and so it's sort of a never-ending cycle of continuing to pile more, and I'm absolutely guilty of this as well. But I think seeing technology as a means to create more time and not just get more done is important.
Manya Chylinski:I so appreciate you saying that and that reminds me of something. I've seen a few different memes across social media talking about AI that I don't want AI to take away writing or art or these things that make us human. I want them to take away, like doing the laundry and cleaning the house and these chores I have to do, and free up time to do the writing and the fun parts of being human. So I do think our relationship with technology is pretty interesting and I know I struggle with it.
Jereme Wilroy:Yeah, I think one I've valuable and that people enjoy are going to be beneficial rather than just again, I think so much in the work the focus is doing the work, not really the process of it, and so it's always about getting more work done, and so if something else can come along and do the work, then we're in trouble, rather than saying I've developed a valuable skill or a career path or something like that.
Manya Chylinski:Yes absolutely.
Manya Chylinski:And I wanted to circle back to something you mentioned a few minutes ago. We were talking about all the different technologies, for example, the reader technology that will read an email for someone who's got low vision, and I think about so. A little while ago, I learned about that technology it's not something I was aware of and how hard it is to translate a hashtag that doesn't have any capital letters in it. So if your hashtag is be a friend, but if there are no capitals in there is be a friend, but if there are no capitals in there, it doesn't know that. That is three different words, and I'm so. That's something I have changed, hopefully all the time. Now I put capitals my hashtags to make them easier to read, but I wonder if there are other things like that that are easy enough for all of us to be thinking about and do that make it easier for people who are using a technology to, in this case, communicate?
Jereme Wilroy:Yeah, absolutely, and I've seen that before too, especially with like pictures. Images are a big one. If they don't have some captions or something that can, it can go in there and describe the picture. I think it's important and there's generally tools across a lot of platforms. I know for me teaching online for students it has tools already built in to these platforms to be able to scan it for accessibility. So I think that's really important for people to make sure that they're utilizing those tools that can support making sure that all of their content is accessible.
Manya Chylinski:Absolutely. Well, Jereme, we're getting close to the end of our time. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you would want to make sure people understand about technology and wellbeing?
Jereme Wilroy:I think, at the end of the day, it's all about boundaries and being intentional, and so I think they're providing more limits that we can set on our social media, or having boundaries with work Used to.
Jereme Wilroy:You couldn't take work home, you had to be in the office to work, and now it's everywhere you go.
Jereme Wilroy:And so for a while for me, for example, I took email off my phone so that I would ensure that I wasn't using it after work hours, and then I started to log in on the browser and then eventually I got it back on my phone so that I would ensure that I wasn't using it after work hours, and then I started to log in on the browser and then eventually I got it back on my phone, now that I have strong enough habit of staying off of it during outside of work hours. So I think setting those boundaries are going to be super important, and then learning what truly is beneficial. You know I've tried to practice more about doing my own sort of evaluation, whether it's just email or messages. It really affects our brain chemistry, you know, to get those check boxes and all that sort of done. So taking some time off of there, I think, is it's been really beneficial when it comes to my own personal productivity in this technology space.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, absolutely. Oh, thank you for sharing that. And, Jereme, before I let you go, can you tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself and what you do and how they can reach you?
Jereme Wilroy:Yeah, so I'm an associate professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and my research is design and testing exercise trials for wheelchair users, as well as designing other health promotion programs, and I have my own lab. It's at thecontinuumlaborg, and people can find out a bit more about what our team does and the projects that we have going on, and even maybe how to get involved if people are interested in that area. Oh, excellent, Thank you.
Manya Chylinski:I will put links for those in the show notes so people can get in touch with. Oh, excellent, thank you. I will put links for those in the show notes so people can get in touch with you to learn more about your work. Jereme, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today.
Jereme Wilroy:Absolutely Thanks for having me.
Manya Chylinski:Thank you for listening. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I did. So if you'd like to learn more about me, manja Chilinski, I work with organizations to help understand how to create environments where people can thrive after difficult life experiences, and I do this through talks and consulting. I'm a survivor of mass violence and I use my experience to help leaders learn about resiliency, compassion and trauma-sensitive leadership to build strategies to enable teams to thrive and be engaged amidst difficulty and turmoil. If this is something you want to learn more about, visit my website, wwwmanyachilinskicom, or email me at manya at manyachilinski, or stop by my social media on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thanks so much.
