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Profile for Michele Pettit

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Michele Pettit

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
Associate Professor
Public Health & Community Health Education University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

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Michele Pettit Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

Associate Professor

Public Health & Community Health Education

Specialty area(s)

Mental and emotional health including stress and coping, violence and injury prevention, health risk behaviors, health equity, and spirituality

Current courses at UWL

CHE 220 Medical Terminology 

HED 207 Youth Health Issues

HED 345 Issues in Mental and Emotional Health

HED 409 Stress Management and Relaxation Skills

HED 425 Violence and Injury Prevention

Education

PhD (Health Education), Southern Illinois University, Carbondale

MPH, University of Illinois at Springfield

BS (Health Science/Community Health) and Minor in Psychology, Truman State University

Graduate Certificate in Christian Spirituality, Loyola University Chicago

Kudos

published

Karen Skemp, lead author, Public Health & Community Health Education; Michele Pettit, co-author, Public Health & Community Health Education; and Patrick Barlow, Institutional Research, Assessment & Planning, co-authored the article "Coping with a Crisis: The Intersection between Spirituality and Social Media" in Journal of Clinical and Basic Psychosomatics, which was published Dec. 31, 2024. doi: 10.36922/jcbp.4563

Submitted on: Feb. 10

presented

Patrick Barlow, Institutional Research, Assessment & Planning; and Michele Pettit and Karen Skemp, both Public Health & Community Health Education; presented "Exploring the nexus of mental health, spirituality, and social media" at American Public Health Association 2024 Annual Meeting & Expo: on Oct. 27 in Minneapolis, MN. Spirituality includes a sense of connection to something bigger than oneself and may become prominent when an individual confronts adversity. Resilience refers to the ability to bounce back from challenging situations. This study examined spiritual coping and resilience in relation to social media use, anxiety, depression, and stress among a campus community during the COVID-19 pandemic. Faculty, staff, and students from a mid-sized Midwestern public university completed an online survey consisting of items from the Spiritual Coping Strategies Scale, a revised version of the Facebook Intensity Scale, the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale, and the Brief Resilience Scale. Age may be a protective factor in offsetting adverse mental health effects of social media. Similarly, religious spiritual coping may be a protective factor against anxiety.

Submitted on: Nov. 20, 2024

presented

Patrick Barlow, Institutional Research, Assessment & Planning; and Michele Pettit and Karen Skemp, both Public Health & Community Health Education; presented "Coping with a crisis: The intersection of spirituality and social media" at American Public Health Association 2023 Annual Meeting & Expo: on Nov. 13 in Atlanta, GA. Spirituality includes a sense of connection to something bigger than oneself and may become prominent when an individual confronts emotional stress, physical ailments or mortality. Resilience refers to the ability to bounce back when presented with challenging situations. COVID-19 presented a challenging situation for people across the globe. To that end, the purpose of this study was to examine spiritual coping in relation to social media use, resilience, stress, depression, and anxiety among a campus community during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Submitted on: Nov. 20, 2023

published

Kathy A. DeBarr Ph. D., Department of Public Health, University of Illinois at Springfield and Michele Pettit, Public Health and Community Health Education, co-authored the article "SROs and School Violence: A Perspective on Roles and Training Needs" in Journal of School Health published on Nov. 14 by American School Health Association.

Submitted on: Nov. 30, 2022