Partnerships Across Health Care Teams and With Deaf Community Members: The Mindfulness Practices Project

Greater cultural and linguistic diversity in mindfulness is needed.

This participatory evaluation project created mindfulness practice videos in sign language by way of partnerships across health care teams at the University of Rochester Medical Center and with Deaf community members.

A review team provided feedback on video rehearsals from mindfulness practice facilitators, then formal filming of loving kindness, mindful sitting (grounding), mindful movement, mindful walking, mindful sitting (breathing), and body scan videos occurred. Video edits from further iterative review were completed post-production.

Suggestions were made to ease the burden of translation from English to sign language, foster understanding of the video rehearsal feedback, and improve the overall clarity and aesthetics of the final videos.

To ensure materials are well-received by diverse audiences who access language visually, development and production requires interdisciplinary collaboration across invested health care teams and extensive project engagement, input, and leadership from community members.