Commencement 2006 The 2006 Connecticut Holistic Health Association Prize for Academic Excellence
Yale University
Spring 2006 Commencement
The 2006 Connecticut Holistic Health Association Prize for Academic Excellence
This prize is given to a deserving student demonstrating academic excellence in a holistically oriented research or clinical project of significant social relevance. This annual award was conceived to recognize scholarly endeavors that use a holistic view.
A holistic view is characterized by the idea that the parts are meaningless outside of the whole. Scholarly endeavors in nursing that take a holistic perspective are exemplified by consideration of the person as whole - body, mind and spirit - within a social context. Although nursing can be distinguished from medicine by our holistic perspective, we often find ourselves working within the Western biomedical model that views the systems that make up a person as being essentially independent from one another. However, biomedical approaches to health problems may not be effective for people whose central values, beliefs and behaviors are grounded in non-Western traditions that are thousands of years old.
The 2006 Connecticut Holistic Health Association Prize for Academic Excellence Citation
Before coming to Yale, this graduate worked as a nurse on a Native American reservation where she observed that many of the children were overweight or obese. She also found that conventional approaches to achieving and maintaining healthy weight emphasized autonomy, individual health and personal fitness, which did not seem to make sense for children and families who were Native American. For her paper, she reviewed and analyzed the literature on obesity, health promotion and trans-cultural nursing. Among her conclusions were that attention to key Native American cultural ideals, including tradition, respect, connection, trust and spirituality, and use of the Native American oral tradition of storytelling could be ways to promote healthy weight for Native Americans. Her work on all phases of her praxis was outstanding.
The 2006 Connecticut Holistic Health Association Prize was presented to Katherine Watkins.
