A Healthy Monday for the NYU Langone Health Rusk Rehabilitation Program

The NYU Langone Health Rusk Rehabilitation team developed an enhancement to its Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation program, with a Healthy Monday online intervention to improve learning and participation in rehabilitation activities among patients with cardiopulmonary disease. NYU Langone Health Rusk Rehabilitation staff collaborated with the Healthy Monday program team to design a 13-week program to educate patients about the physical and psychological effects of health activities as well as encourage them to perform the related practices for stress management, physical activity, and healthy eating. Much of the material was selected from the existing Healthy Monday portfolio, while some custom materials were developed with guidance from the NYU Langone Health Rusk Rehabilitation team to address specific needs of the cardiac and pulmonary patients.

A weekly email was delivered through the NYU Langone MyChart system connecting patients to a dedicated landing page hosted on The Monday Campaigns website, where additional information and weekly practices were available. Every Monday throughout the weekly cycle, patients were encouraged to learn about the benefits of each practice, perform the practice, and then complete a short questionnaire regarding their engagement. The program was offered in constant rotation, so patients could start at any time during the 13-week cycle, and even repeat the cycle if there time working with the rehab team extends further than 13 weeks.

Preliminary data collected from the weekly quality improvement and end-of-program quality improvement questionnaires found that more than half of the patients who received the emails opened the message, and nearly all members of that group who completed the questionnaire said that they were likely to try the recommended activity. The questionnaires responses also showed that the messages were considered valuable by the recipients and that recipients believe the messages helped them stay on track with their health.

Because of these initial positive results, NYU Langone Health Rusk Rehabilitation and Healthy Monday teams continue to deliver the program and NYU Langone Rusk Rehabilitation will continue to collect quality improvement data to gather more feedback and refine the program. The goal is to share this program will other hospitals and health systems to supplement their existing cardiopulmonary rehabilitation programs.