Oct 29, 2025
Two graduate students from the Department of Health & Kinesiology receive Meritorious Poster Award.
Graduate students Onosai Fonoti and Mickey Bolyard, members of the Estabrooks Research Group, received Meritorious Poster Awards at the Center for Metabolic Health’s Annual Research Retreat.
Onosai was honored for his project that explores culturally grounded outreach strategies to increase engagement with the University of Utah’s Wellness Bus among Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) communities in the Salt Lake Valley. He hopes this work will provide insights into how culturally tailored approaches can strengthen trust, accessibility, and utilization of preventive health services among NHPI communities here in Utah.
Mickey was awarded for their project that explores how Utah health and wellbeing teachers decide to adopt and implement Team Thrive, a diabetes prevention curriculum provided by the University of Utah Center for Community Nutrition. Team Thrive is an evidence-based type 2 diabetes prevention curriculum with learning objectives that align with state standards for health education. To understand teacher decision-making, Mickey surveyed health educators about factors that influence curriculum adoption and delivery. Using workflow analysis methods, Mickey’s project aims to improve the dissemination and implementation of Team Thrive by identifying adoption pathways among health teachers and assessing teacher implementation fidelity to intervention components and standard-based learning objectives.
Onosai’s academic background includes a Bachelors in Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior from the University of California, Davis, and prior community-engaged research experience through the Haumana ‘O Pasifika Summer Research Internship at the University of Utah, which has shaped his interest in health equity and improving access to care for underserved communities.
Mickey brings a background in exercise science and physiology to this work. Their research background focuses on preventing obesity and related disease through physical activity and healthy eating, expertise that informs their approach to health promotion and intervention development.