Self care, Health

Little is known about breast health behaviors in Afro-Caribbean women (ACW) residing in the United States, as they are often included in the collective group of African American women (AAW). The objective of this study was to determine the influence of a spiritually-guided intervention on breast health self-care (BHSC) attitudes in ACW residing in southeastern Florida using a concurrent triangulation mixed methods design. One hundred and seventeen women were recruited from three local south Florida Caribbean churches. Inclusion criteria included: (a) self-identification as Afro-Caribbean, (b) female aged 30 years or older, (c) living in the United States for at least 1 year, (d) able to provide informed consent, (e) able to speak and read English at the 8th grade level, and (f) no previous history of breast cancer.

Wellness and healthy life are the most common concerns for an individual to lead a happy life. A web-based approach known as Wellness Scoring is being developed taking into people’s concerns for their health issues. In this approach, four different classifiers are being investigated to predict the wellness. In this thesis, we investigated four different classifiers (a probabilistic graphical model, simple probabilistic classifier, probabilistic statistical classification and an artificial neural network) to predict the wellness outcome. An approach to calculate wellness score is also addressed. All these classifiers are trained on real data, hence giving more accurate results. With this solution, there is a better way of keeping track of an individuals’ health. In this thesis, we present the design and development of such a system and evaluate the performance of the classifiers and design considerations to maximize the end user experience with the application. A user experience model capable of predicting the wellness score for a given set of risk factors is developed.