Abstract

Background: People with multiple sclerosis (MS) have identified “wellness” and associated behaviors as a high priority based on “social media listening” undertaken by the National MS Society (i.e. the Society).

Objective: The Society recently convened a group that consisted of researchers with experience in MS and wellness-related research, Society staff members, and an individual with MS for developing recommendations regarding a wellness research agenda.

Method: The members of the group engaged in focal reviews and discussions involving the state of science within three approaches for promoting wellness in MS, namely diet, exercise, and emotional wellness.

Results: That process informed a group-mediated activity for developing and prioritizing research goals for wellness in MS. This served as a background for articulating the mission and objectives of the Society’s Wellness Research Working Group.

Conclusion: The primary mission of the Wellness Research Working Group is the provision of scientific evidence supporting the application of lifestyle, behavioral, and psychosocial approaches for promoting optimal health of mind, body, and spirit (i.e. wellness) in people with MS as well as managing the disease and its consequences.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-1-2018

Notes/Citation Information

Published in Multiple Sclerosis Journal, v. 24, issue 3, p. 262-267.

© The Author(s), 2017

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1177/1352458516687404

Funding Information

The authors declared receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was support by the National MS Society.

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