thesis statement for health and wellness

Health Thesis Statemen

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Navigating the intricate landscape of health topics requires a well-structured thesis statement to anchor your essay. Whether delving into public health policies or examining medical advancements, crafting a compelling health thesis statement is crucial. This guide delves into exemplary health thesis statement examples, providing insights into their composition. Additionally, it offers practical tips on constructing powerful statements that not only capture the essence of your research but also engage readers from the outset.

What is the Health Thesis Statement? – Definition

A health thesis statement is a concise declaration that outlines the main argument or purpose of an essay or research paper thesis statement focused on health-related topics. It serves as a roadmap for the reader, indicating the central idea that the paper will explore, discuss, or analyze within the realm of health, medicine, wellness, or related fields.

What is an Example of a Medical/Health Thesis Statement?

Example: “The implementation of comprehensive public health campaigns is imperative in curbing the escalating rates of obesity and promoting healthier lifestyle choices among children and adolescents.”

In this example, the final thesis statement succinctly highlights the importance of public health initiatives as a means to address a specific health issue (obesity) and advocate for healthier behaviors among a targeted demographic (children and adolescents).

100 Health Thesis Statement Examples

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Discover a comprehensive collection of 100 distinct health thesis statement examples across various healthcare realms. From telemedicine’s impact on accessibility to genetic research’s potential for personalized medicine, delve into obesity, mental health, antibiotic resistance, opioid epidemic solutions, and more. Explore these examples that shed light on pressing health concerns, innovative strategies, and crucial policy considerations. You may also be interested to browse through our other  speech thesis statement .

• Childhood Obesity : “Effective school-based nutrition programs are pivotal in combating childhood obesity, fostering healthy habits, and reducing the risk of long-term health complications.”
• Mental Health Stigma : “Raising awareness through media campaigns and educational initiatives is paramount in eradicating mental health stigma, promoting early intervention, and improving overall well-being.”
• Universal Healthcare : “The implementation of universal healthcare systems positively impacts population health, ensuring access to necessary medical services for all citizens.”
• Elderly Care : “Creating comprehensive elderly care programs that encompass medical, social, and emotional support enhances the quality of life for aging populations.”
• Cancer Research : “Increased funding and collaboration in cancer research expedite advancements in treatment options and improve survival rates for patients.”
• Maternal Health : “Elevating maternal health through accessible prenatal care, education, and support systems reduces maternal mortality rates and improves neonatal outcomes.”
• Vaccination Policies : “Mandatory vaccination policies safeguard public health by curbing preventable diseases and maintaining herd immunity.”
• Epidemic Preparedness : “Developing robust epidemic preparedness plans and international cooperation mechanisms is crucial for timely responses to emerging health threats.”
• Access to Medications : “Ensuring equitable access to essential medications, especially in low-income regions, is pivotal for preventing unnecessary deaths and improving overall health outcomes.”
• Healthy Lifestyle Promotion : “Educational campaigns promoting exercise, balanced nutrition, and stress management play a key role in fostering healthier lifestyles and preventing chronic diseases.”
• Health Disparities : “Addressing health disparities through community-based interventions and equitable healthcare access contributes to a fairer distribution of health resources.”
• Elderly Mental Health : “Prioritizing mental health services for the elderly population reduces depression, anxiety, and cognitive decline, enhancing their overall quality of life.”
• Genetic Counseling : “Accessible genetic counseling services empower individuals to make informed decisions about their health, family planning, and potential genetic risks.”
• Substance Abuse Treatment : “Expanding availability and affordability of substance abuse treatment facilities and programs is pivotal in combating addiction and reducing its societal impact.”
• Patient Empowerment : “Empowering patients through health literacy initiatives fosters informed decision-making, improving treatment adherence and overall health outcomes.”
• Environmental Health : “Implementing stricter environmental regulations reduces exposure to pollutants, protecting public health and mitigating the risk of respiratory illnesses.”
• Digital Health Records : “The widespread adoption of digital health records streamlines patient information management, enhancing communication among healthcare providers and improving patient care.”
• Healthy Aging : “Promoting active lifestyles, social engagement, and cognitive stimulation among the elderly population contributes to healthier aging and reduced age-related health issues.”
• Telehealth Ethics : “Ethical considerations in telehealth services include patient privacy, data security, and maintaining the quality of remote medical consultations.”
• Public Health Campaigns : “Strategically designed public health campaigns raise awareness about prevalent health issues, motivating individuals to adopt healthier behaviors and seek preventive care.”
• Nutrition Education : “Integrating nutrition education into school curricula equips students with essential dietary knowledge, reducing the risk of nutrition-related health problems.”
• Healthcare Infrastructure : “Investments in healthcare infrastructure, including medical facilities and trained personnel, enhance healthcare access and quality, particularly in underserved regions.”
• Mental Health Support in Schools : “Introducing comprehensive mental health support systems in schools nurtures emotional well-being, reduces academic stress, and promotes healthy student development.”
• Antibiotic Stewardship : “Implementing antibiotic stewardship programs in healthcare facilities preserves the effectiveness of antibiotics, curbing the rise of antibiotic-resistant infections.”
• Health Education in Rural Areas : “Expanding health education initiatives in rural communities bridges the information gap, enabling residents to make informed health choices.”
• Global Health Initiatives : “International collaboration on global health initiatives bolsters disease surveillance, preparedness, and response to protect global populations from health threats.”
• Access to Clean Water : “Ensuring access to clean water and sanitation facilities improves public health by preventing waterborne diseases and enhancing overall hygiene.”
• Telemedicine and Mental Health : “Leveraging telemedicine for mental health services increases access to therapy and counseling, particularly for individuals in remote areas.”
• Chronic Disease Management : “Comprehensive chronic disease management programs enhance patients’ quality of life by providing personalized care plans and consistent medical support.”
• Healthcare Workforce Diversity : “Promoting diversity within the healthcare workforce enhances cultural competence, patient-provider communication, and overall healthcare quality.”
• Community Health Centers : “Establishing community health centers in underserved neighborhoods ensures accessible primary care services, reducing health disparities and emergency room utilization.”
• Youth Health Education : “Incorporating comprehensive health education in schools equips young people with knowledge about reproductive health, substance abuse prevention, and mental well-being.”
• Dietary Guidelines : “Implementing evidence-based dietary guidelines and promoting healthy eating habits contribute to reducing obesity rates and preventing chronic diseases.”
• Healthcare Innovation : “Investing in healthcare innovation, such as telemedicine platforms and wearable health technologies, transforms patient care delivery and monitoring.”
• Pandemic Preparedness : “Effective pandemic preparedness plans involve cross-sector coordination, rapid response strategies, and transparent communication to protect global health security.”
• Maternal and Child Nutrition : “Prioritizing maternal and child nutrition through government programs and community initiatives leads to healthier pregnancies and better child development.”
• Health Literacy : “Improving health literacy through accessible health information and education empowers individuals to make informed decisions about their well-being.”
• Medical Research Funding : “Increased funding for medical research accelerates scientific discoveries, leading to breakthroughs in treatments and advancements in healthcare.”
• Reproductive Health Services : “Accessible reproductive health services, including family planning and maternal care, improve women’s health outcomes and support family well-being.”
• Obesity Prevention in Schools : “Introducing physical activity programs and nutritional education in schools prevents childhood obesity, laying the foundation for healthier lifestyles.”
• Global Vaccine Distribution : “Ensuring equitable global vaccine distribution addresses health disparities, protects vulnerable populations, and fosters international cooperation.”
• Healthcare Ethics : “Ethical considerations in healthcare decision-making encompass patient autonomy, informed consent, and equitable resource allocation.”
• Aging-in-Place Initiatives : “Aging-in-place programs that provide home modifications and community support enable elderly individuals to maintain independence and well-being.”
• E-Health Records Privacy : “Balancing the benefits of electronic health records with patients’ privacy concerns necessitates robust data security measures and patient consent protocols.”
• Tobacco Control : “Comprehensive tobacco control measures, including high taxation and anti-smoking campaigns, reduce tobacco consumption and related health risks.”
• Epidemiological Studies : “Conducting rigorous epidemiological studies informs public health policies, identifies risk factors, and guides disease prevention strategies.”
• Organ Transplant Policies : “Ethical organ transplant policies prioritize equitable organ allocation, ensuring fair access to life-saving treatments.”
• Workplace Wellness Programs : “Implementing workplace wellness programs promotes employee health, reduces absenteeism, and enhances productivity.”
• Emergency Medical Services : “Strengthening emergency medical services infrastructure ensures timely responses to medical crises, saving lives and reducing complications.”
• Healthcare Access for Undocumented Immigrants : “Expanding healthcare access for undocumented immigrants improves overall community health and prevents communicable disease outbreaks.”
• Primary Care Shortage Solutions : “Addressing primary care shortages through incentives for healthcare professionals and expanded training programs enhances access to basic medical services.”
• Patient-Centered Care : “Prioritizing patient-centered care emphasizes communication, shared decision-making, and respecting patients’ preferences in medical treatments.”
• Nutrition Labels Impact : “The effectiveness of clear and informative nutrition labels on packaged foods contributes to healthier dietary choices and reduced obesity rates.”
• Stress Management Strategies : “Promoting stress management techniques, such as mindfulness and relaxation, improves mental health and reduces the risk of stress-related illnesses.”
• Access to Reproductive Health Education : “Ensuring access to comprehensive reproductive health education empowers individuals to make informed decisions about their sexual and reproductive well-being.”
• Medical Waste Management : “Effective medical waste management practices protect both public health and the environment by preventing contamination and pollution.”
• Preventive Dental Care : “Prioritizing preventive dental care through community programs and education reduces oral health issues and associated healthcare costs.”
• Pharmaceutical Pricing Reform : “Addressing pharmaceutical pricing reform enhances medication affordability and ensures access to life-saving treatments for all.”
• Community Health Worker Role : “Empowering community health workers to provide education, support, and basic medical services improves healthcare access in underserved areas.”
• Healthcare Technology Adoption : “Adopting innovative healthcare technologies, such as AI-assisted diagnostics, enhances accuracy, efficiency, and patient outcomes in medical practices.”
• Elderly Falls Prevention : “Implementing falls prevention programs for the elderly population reduces injuries, hospitalizations, and healthcare costs, enhancing their overall well-being.”
• Healthcare Data Privacy Laws : “Stricter healthcare data privacy laws protect patients’ sensitive information, maintaining their trust and promoting transparent data management practices.”
• School Health Clinics : “Establishing health clinics in schools provides easy access to medical services for students, promoting early detection and timely treatment of health issues.”
• Healthcare Cultural Competence : “Cultivating cultural competence among healthcare professionals improves patient-provider communication, enhances trust, and reduces healthcare disparities.”
• Health Equity in Clinical Trials : “Ensuring health equity in clinical trials by diverse participant representation enhances the generalizability of research findings to different populations.”
• Digital Mental Health Interventions : “Utilizing digital mental health interventions, such as therapy apps, expands access to mental health services and reduces stigma surrounding seeking help.”
• Aging and Neurodegenerative Diseases : “Exploring the connection between aging and neurodegenerative diseases informs early interventions and treatment strategies to mitigate cognitive decline.”
• Healthcare Waste Reduction : “Implementing sustainable healthcare waste reduction measures decreases environmental impact and contributes to a greener healthcare industry.”
• Medical Ethics in End-of-Life Care : “Ethical considerations in end-of-life care decision-making ensure patient autonomy, quality of life, and respectful treatment choices.”
• Healthcare Interoperability : “Enhancing healthcare data interoperability between different medical systems and providers improves patient care coordination and information sharing.”
• Healthcare Disparities in Indigenous Communities : “Addressing healthcare disparities in Indigenous communities through culturally sensitive care and community engagement improves health outcomes.”
• Music Therapy in Healthcare : “Exploring the role of music therapy in healthcare settings reveals its positive effects on reducing pain, anxiety, and enhancing emotional well-being.”
• Healthcare Waste Management Policies : “Effective healthcare waste management policies regulate the disposal of medical waste, protecting both public health and the environment.”
• Agricultural Practices and Public Health : “Analyzing the impact of agricultural practices on public health highlights the connections between food production, environmental health, and nutrition.”
• Online Health Information Reliability : “Promoting the reliability of online health information through credible sources and fact-checking guides empowers individuals to make informed health decisions.”
• Neonatal Intensive Care : “Advancements in neonatal intensive care technology enhance premature infants’ chances of survival and long-term health.”
• Fitness Technology : “The integration of fitness technology in daily routines motivates individuals to engage in physical activity, promoting better cardiovascular health.”
• Climate Change and Health : “Examining the health effects of climate change emphasizes the need for mitigation strategies to protect communities from heat-related illnesses, vector-borne diseases, and other climate-related health risks.”
• Healthcare Cybersecurity : “Robust cybersecurity measures in healthcare systems safeguard patient data and protect against cyberattacks that can compromise medical records.”
• Healthcare Quality Metrics : “Evaluating healthcare quality through metrics such as patient satisfaction, outcomes, and safety indicators informs continuous improvement efforts in medical facilities.”
• Maternal Health Disparities : “Addressing maternal health disparities among different racial and socioeconomic groups through accessible prenatal care and support reduces maternal mortality rates.”
• Disaster Preparedness : “Effective disaster preparedness plans in healthcare facilities ensure timely responses during emergencies, minimizing casualties and maintaining patient care.”
• Sleep Health : “Promoting sleep health education emphasizes the importance of quality sleep in overall well-being, preventing sleep-related disorders and associated health issues.”
• Healthcare AI Ethics : “Navigating the ethical implications of using artificial intelligence in healthcare, such as diagnosis algorithms, safeguards patient privacy and accuracy.”
• Pediatric Nutrition : “Prioritizing pediatric nutrition education encourages healthy eating habits from a young age, reducing the risk of childhood obesity and related health concerns.”
• Mental Health in First Responders : “Providing mental health support for first responders acknowledges the psychological toll of their work, preventing burnout and trauma-related issues.”
• Healthcare Workforce Burnout : “Addressing healthcare workforce burnout through organizational support, manageable workloads, and mental health resources improves patient care quality.”
• Vaccine Hesitancy : “Effective strategies to address vaccine hesitancy involve transparent communication, education, and addressing concerns to maintain vaccination rates and community immunity.”
• Climate-Resilient Healthcare Facilities : “Designing climate-resilient healthcare facilities prepares medical centers to withstand extreme weather events and ensure continuous patient care.”
• Nutrition in Aging : “Emphasizing balanced nutrition among the elderly population supports healthy aging, preventing malnutrition-related health complications.”
• Medication Adherence Strategies : “Implementing medication adherence strategies, such as reminder systems and simplified regimens, improves treatment outcomes and reduces hospitalizations.”
• Crisis Intervention : “Effective crisis intervention strategies in mental health care prevent escalations, promote de-escalation techniques, and improve patient safety.”
• Healthcare Waste Recycling : “Promoting healthcare waste recycling initiatives reduces landfill waste, conserves resources, and minimizes the environmental impact of medical facilities.”
• Healthcare Financial Accessibility : “Strategies to enhance healthcare financial accessibility, such as sliding scale fees and insurance coverage expansion, ensure equitable care for all.”
• Palliative Care : “Prioritizing palliative care services improves patients’ quality of life by addressing pain management, symptom relief, and emotional support.”
• Healthcare and Artificial Intelligence : “Exploring the integration of artificial intelligence in diagnostics and treatment planning enhances medical accuracy and reduces human error.”
• Personalized Medicine : “Advancements in personalized medicine tailor treatments based on individual genetics and characteristics, leading to more precise and effective healthcare.”
• Patient Advocacy : “Empowering patients through education and advocacy training enables them to navigate the healthcare system and actively participate in their treatment decisions.”
• Healthcare Waste Reduction : “Promoting the reduction of healthcare waste through sustainable practices and responsible disposal methods minimizes environmental and health risks.”
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine : “Examining the efficacy and safety of complementary and alternative medicine approaches provides insights into their potential role in enhancing overall health and well-being.”

Thesis Statement Examples for Physical Health

Discover 10 unique good thesis statement examples that delve into physical health, from the impact of fitness technology on exercise motivation to the importance of nutrition education in preventing chronic illnesses. Explore these examples shedding light on the pivotal role of physical well-being in disease prevention and overall quality of life.

• Fitness Technology’s Influence : “The integration of fitness technology like wearable devices enhances physical health by fostering exercise adherence, tracking progress, and promoting active lifestyles.”
• Nutrition Education’s Role : “Incorporating comprehensive nutrition education in schools equips students with essential dietary knowledge, reducing the risk of nutrition-related health issues.”
• Active Lifestyle Promotion : “Public spaces and urban planning strategies that encourage physical activity contribute to community health and well-being, reducing sedentary behavior.”
• Sports Injuries Prevention : “Strategic implementation of sports injury prevention programs and adequate athlete conditioning minimizes the incidence of sports-related injuries, preserving physical well-being.”
• Physical Health in Workplace : “Prioritizing ergonomic design and promoting workplace physical activity positively impact employees’ physical health, reducing musculoskeletal issues and stress-related ailments.”
• Childhood Obesity Mitigation : “School-based interventions, including physical education and health education, play a pivotal role in mitigating childhood obesity and promoting lifelong physical health.”
• Outdoor Activity and Wellness : “Unstructured outdoor play, especially in natural settings, fosters children’s physical health, cognitive development, and emotional well-being.”
• Senior Nutrition and Mobility : “Tailored nutrition plans and physical activity interventions for seniors support physical health, mobility, and independence during the aging process.”
• Health Benefits of Active Commuting : “Promotion of active commuting modes such as walking and cycling improves cardiovascular health, reduces pollution, and enhances overall well-being.”
• Physical Health’s Longevity Impact : “Sustaining physical health through regular exercise, balanced nutrition, and preventive measures positively influences longevity, ensuring a higher quality of life.”

Thesis Statement Examples for Health Protocols

Explore 10 thesis statement examples that highlight the significance of health protocols, encompassing infection control in medical settings to the ethical guidelines for telemedicine practices. These examples underscore the pivotal role of health protocols in ensuring patient safety, maintaining effective healthcare practices, and preventing the spread of illnesses across various contexts.  You should also take a look at our  thesis statement for report .

• Infection Control and Patient Safety : “Rigorous infection control protocols in healthcare settings are paramount to patient safety, curbing healthcare-associated infections and maintaining quality care standards.”
• Evidence-Based Treatment Guidelines : “Adhering to evidence-based treatment guidelines enhances medical decision-making, improves patient outcomes, and promotes standardized, effective healthcare practices.”
• Ethics in Telemedicine : “Establishing ethical guidelines for telemedicine practices is crucial to ensure patient confidentiality, quality of care, and responsible remote medical consultations.”
• Emergency Response Preparedness : “Effective emergency response protocols in healthcare facilities ensure timely and coordinated actions, optimizing patient care, and minimizing potential harm.”
• Clinical Trial Integrity : “Stringent adherence to health protocols in clinical trials preserves data integrity, ensures participant safety, and upholds ethical principles in medical research.”
• Safety in Daycare Settings : “Implementing robust infection prevention protocols in daycare settings is vital to curb disease transmission, safeguarding the health of children and staff.”
• Privacy and E-Health : “Upholding stringent patient privacy protocols in electronic health records is paramount for data security, fostering trust, and maintaining confidentiality.”
• Hand Hygiene and Infection Prevention : “Promoting proper hand hygiene protocols among healthcare providers significantly reduces infection transmission risks, protecting both patients and medical personnel.”
• Food Safety in Restaurants : “Strict adherence to comprehensive food safety protocols within the restaurant industry is essential to prevent foodborne illnesses and ensure public health.”
• Pandemic Preparedness and Response : “Developing robust pandemic preparedness protocols, encompassing risk assessment and response strategies, is essential to effectively manage disease outbreaks and protect public health.”

Thesis Statement Examples on Health Benefits

Uncover 10 illuminating thesis statement examples exploring the diverse spectrum of health benefits, from the positive impact of green spaces on mental well-being to the advantages of mindfulness practices in stress reduction. Delve into these examples that underscore the profound influence of health-promoting activities on overall physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

• Nature’s Impact on Mental Health : “The presence of green spaces in urban environments positively influences mental health by reducing stress, enhancing mood, and fostering relaxation.”
• Mindfulness for Stress Reduction : “Incorporating mindfulness practices into daily routines promotes mental clarity, reduces stress, and improves overall emotional well-being.”
• Social Interaction’s Role : “Engaging in regular social interactions and fostering strong social connections contributes to mental well-being, combating feelings of loneliness and isolation.”
• Physical Activity’s Cognitive Benefits : “Participation in regular physical activity enhances cognitive function, memory retention, and overall brain health, promoting lifelong mental well-being.”
• Positive Effects of Laughter : “Laughter’s physiological and psychological benefits, including stress reduction and improved mood, have a direct impact on overall mental well-being.”
• Nutrition’s Impact on Mood : “Balanced nutrition and consumption of mood-enhancing nutrients play a pivotal role in regulating mood and promoting positive mental health.”
• Creative Expression and Emotional Well-Being : “Engaging in creative activities, such as art and music, provides an outlet for emotional expression and fosters psychological well-being.”
• Cultural Engagement’s Influence : “Participating in cultural and artistic activities enriches emotional well-being, promoting a sense of identity, belonging, and purpose.”
• Volunteering and Mental Health : “Volunteering contributes to improved mental well-being by fostering a sense of purpose, social connection, and positive self-esteem.”
• Emotional Benefits of Pet Ownership : “The companionship of pets provides emotional support, reduces stress, and positively impacts overall mental well-being.”

Thesis Statement Examples on Mental Health

Explore 10 thought-provoking thesis statement examples delving into various facets of mental health, from addressing stigma surrounding mental illnesses to advocating for increased mental health support in schools. These examples shed light on the importance of understanding, promoting, and prioritizing mental health to achieve holistic well-being.

• Stigma Reduction for Mental Health : “Challenging societal stigma surrounding mental health encourages open dialogue, fostering acceptance, and creating a supportive environment for individuals seeking help.”
• Mental Health Education in Schools : “Incorporating comprehensive mental health education in school curricula equips students with emotional coping skills, destigmatizes mental health discussions, and supports overall well-being.”
• Mental Health Awareness Campaigns : “Strategically designed mental health awareness campaigns raise public consciousness, reduce stigma, and promote early intervention and access to support.”
• Workplace Mental Health Initiatives : “Implementing workplace mental health programs, including stress management and emotional support, enhances employee well-being and job satisfaction.”
• Digital Mental Health Interventions : “Leveraging digital platforms for mental health interventions, such as therapy apps and online support groups, increases accessibility and reduces barriers to seeking help.”
• Impact of Social Media on Mental Health : “Examining the influence of social media on mental health highlights both positive and negative effects, guiding responsible usage and promoting well-being.”
• Mental Health Disparities : “Addressing mental health disparities among different demographics through culturally sensitive care and accessible services is crucial for equitable well-being.”
• Trauma-Informed Care : “Adopting trauma-informed care approaches in mental health settings acknowledges the impact of past trauma, ensuring respectful and effective treatment.”
• Positive Psychology Interventions : “Incorporating positive psychology interventions, such as gratitude practices and resilience training, enhances mental well-being and emotional resilience.”
• Mental Health Support for First Responders : “Recognizing the unique mental health challenges faced by first responders and providing tailored support services is essential for maintaining their well-being.”

Thesis Statement Examples on Covid-19

Explore 10 illuminating thesis statement examples focusing on various aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic, from the impact on mental health to the role of public health measures. Delve into these examples that highlight the interdisciplinary nature of addressing the pandemic’s challenges and implications on global health.

• Mental Health Crisis Amid Covid-19 : “The Covid-19 pandemic’s psychological toll underscores the urgency of implementing mental health support services and destigmatizing seeking help.”
• Role of Public Health Measures : “Analyzing the effectiveness of public health measures, including lockdowns and vaccination campaigns, in curbing the spread of Covid-19 highlights their pivotal role in pandemic control.”
• Equitable Access to Vaccines : “Ensuring equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines globally is vital to achieving widespread immunity, preventing new variants, and ending the pandemic.”
• Online Education’s Impact : “Exploring the challenges and opportunities of online education during the Covid-19 pandemic provides insights into its effects on students’ academic progress and mental well-being.”
• Economic Implications and Mental Health : “Investigating the economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic on mental health highlights the need for comprehensive social support systems and mental health resources.”
• Crisis Communication Strategies : “Evaluating effective crisis communication strategies during the Covid-19 pandemic underscores the importance of transparent information dissemination, fostering public trust.”
• Long-Term Health Effects : “Understanding the potential long-term health effects of Covid-19 on recovered individuals guides healthcare planning and underscores the importance of ongoing monitoring.”
• Digital Health Solutions : “Leveraging digital health solutions, such as telemedicine and contact tracing apps, plays a pivotal role in tracking and managing Covid-19 transmission.”
• Resilience Amid Adversity : “Exploring individual and community resilience strategies during the Covid-19 pandemic sheds light on coping mechanisms and adaptive behaviors in times of crisis.”
• Global Cooperation in Pandemic Response : “Assessing global cooperation and collaboration in pandemic response highlights the significance of international solidarity and coordination in managing global health crises.”

Nursing Thesis Statement Examples

Explore 10 insightful thesis statement examples that delve into the dynamic realm of nursing, from advocating for improved nurse-patient communication to addressing challenges in healthcare staffing. These examples emphasize the critical role of nursing professionals in patient care, healthcare systems, and the continuous pursuit of excellence in the field.

• Nurse-Patient Communication Enhancement : “Elevating nurse-patient communication through effective communication training programs improves patient satisfaction, treatment adherence, and overall healthcare outcomes.”
• Nursing Leadership Impact : “Empowering nursing leadership in healthcare institutions fosters improved patient care, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the cultivation of a positive work environment.”
• Challenges in Nursing Shortages : “Addressing nursing shortages through recruitment strategies, retention programs, and educational support enhances patient safety and healthcare system stability.”
• Evidence-Based Nursing Practices : “Promoting evidence-based nursing practices enhances patient care quality, ensuring that interventions are rooted in current research and best practices.”
• Nursing Role in Preventive Care : “Harnessing the nursing profession’s expertise in preventive care and patient education reduces disease burden and healthcare costs, emphasizing a proactive approach.”
• Nursing Advocacy and Patient Rights : “Nurse advocacy for patients’ rights and informed decision-making ensures ethical treatment, patient autonomy, and respectful healthcare experiences.”
• Nursing Ethics and Dilemmas : “Navigating ethical dilemmas in nursing, such as end-of-life care decisions, highlights the importance of ethical frameworks and interdisciplinary collaboration.”
• Telehealth Nursing Adaptation : “Adapting nursing practices to telehealth platforms requires specialized training and protocols to ensure safe, effective, and patient-centered remote care.”
• Nurse Educators’ Impact : “Nurse educators play a pivotal role in shaping the future of nursing by providing comprehensive education, fostering critical thinking, and promoting continuous learning.”
• Mental Health Nursing Expertise : “The specialized skills of mental health nurses in assessment, intervention, and patient support contribute significantly to addressing the growing mental health crisis.”

Thesis Statement Examples for Health and Wellness

Delve into 10 thesis statement examples that explore the interconnectedness of health and wellness, ranging from the integration of holistic well-being practices in healthcare to the significance of self-care in preventing burnout. These examples highlight the importance of fostering balance and proactive health measures for individuals and communities.

• Holistic Health Integration : “Incorporating holistic health practices, such as mindfulness and nutrition, within conventional healthcare models supports comprehensive well-being and disease prevention.”
• Self-Care’s Impact on Burnout : “Prioritizing self-care among healthcare professionals reduces burnout, enhances job satisfaction, and ensures high-quality patient care delivery.”
• Community Wellness Initiatives : “Community wellness programs that address physical, mental, and social well-being contribute to healthier populations and reduced healthcare burdens.”
• Wellness in Aging Populations : “Tailored wellness programs for the elderly population encompass physical activity, cognitive stimulation, and social engagement, promoting healthier aging.”
• Corporate Wellness Benefits : “Implementing corporate wellness programs enhances employee health, morale, and productivity, translating into lower healthcare costs and higher job satisfaction.”
• Nutrition’s Role in Wellness : “Prioritizing balanced nutrition through education and accessible food options plays a pivotal role in overall wellness and chronic disease prevention.”
• Mental and Emotional Well-Being : “Fostering mental and emotional well-being through therapy, support networks, and stress management positively impacts overall health and life satisfaction.”
• Wellness Tourism’s Rise : “Exploring the growth of wellness tourism underscores the demand for travel experiences that prioritize rejuvenation, relaxation, and holistic well-being.”
• Digital Health for Wellness : “Leveraging digital health platforms for wellness, such as wellness apps and wearable devices, empowers individuals to monitor and enhance their well-being.”
• Equitable Access to Wellness : “Promoting equitable access to wellness resources and facilities ensures that all individuals, regardless of socioeconomic status, can prioritize their health and well-being.”

What is a good thesis statement about mental health?

A thesis statement about mental health is a concise and clear declaration that encapsulates the main point or argument you’re making in your essay or research paper related to mental health. It serves as a roadmap for your readers, guiding them through the content and focus of your work. Crafting a strong thesis statement about mental health involves careful consideration of the topic and a clear understanding of the points you’ll discuss. Here’s how you can create a good thesis statement about mental health:

• Choose a Specific Focus : Mental health is a broad topic. Determine the specific aspect of mental health you want to explore, whether it’s the impact of stigma, the importance of access to treatment, the role of mental health in overall well-being, or another angle.
• Make a Debatable Assertion : A thesis statement should present an argument or perspective that can be debated or discussed. Avoid statements that are overly broad or universally accepted.
• Be Clear and Concise : Keep your thesis statement concise while conveying your main idea. It’s usually a single sentence that provides insight into the content of your paper.
• Provide Direction : Your thesis statement should indicate the direction your paper will take. It’s like a roadmap that tells your readers what to expect.
• Make it Strong : Strong thesis statements are specific, assertive, and supported by evidence. Don’t shy away from taking a clear stance on the topic.
• Revise and Refine : As you draft your paper, your understanding of the topic might evolve. Your thesis statement may need revision to accurately reflect your arguments.

How do you write a Health Thesis Statement? – Step by Step Guide

Crafting a strong health thesis statement requires a systematic approach. Follow these steps to create an effective health thesis statement:

• Choose a Health Topic : Select a specific health-related topic that interests you and aligns with your assignment or research objective.
• Narrow Down the Focus : Refine the topic to a specific aspect. Avoid overly broad statements; instead, zoom in on a particular issue.
• Identify Your Stance : Determine your perspective on the topic. Are you advocating for a particular solution, analyzing causes and effects, or comparing different viewpoints?
• Formulate a Debatable Assertion : Develop a clear and arguable statement that captures the essence of your position on the topic.
• Consider Counterarguments : Anticipate counterarguments and incorporate them into your thesis statement. This adds depth and acknowledges opposing views.
• Be Concise and Specific : Keep your thesis statement succinct while conveying the main point. Avoid vague language or generalities.
• Test for Clarity : Share your thesis statement with someone else to ensure it’s clear and understandable to an audience unfamiliar with the topic.
• Refine and Revise : Your thesis statement is not set in stone. As you research and write, you might find it necessary to revise and refine it to accurately reflect your evolving arguments.

Tips for Writing a Thesis Statement on Health Topics

Writing a thesis statement on health topics requires precision and careful consideration. Here are some tips to help you craft an effective thesis statement:

• Be Specific : Address a specific aspect of health rather than a broad topic. This allows for a more focused and insightful thesis statement.
• Take a Stance : Your thesis statement should present a clear perspective or argument. Avoid vague statements that don’t express a stance.
• Avoid Absolute Statements : Be cautious of using words like “always” or “never.” Instead, use language that acknowledges complexity and nuance.
• Incorporate Keywords : Include keywords that indicate the subject of your research, such as “nutrition,” “mental health,” “public health,” or other relevant terms.
• Preview Supporting Points : Your thesis statement can preview the main points or arguments you’ll discuss in your paper, providing readers with a roadmap.
• Revise as Necessary : Your thesis statement may evolve as you research and write. Don’t hesitate to revise it to accurately reflect your findings.
• Stay Focused : Ensure that your thesis statement remains directly relevant to your topic throughout your writing.

Remember that your thesis statement is the foundation of your paper. It guides your research and writing process, helping you stay on track and deliver a coherent argument.

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Home — Essay Samples — Nursing & Health — Mental Health — Mental Health Thesis Statement

Mental Health Thesis Statement

• Categories: Mental Health

About this sample

Words: 432 |

Published: Mar 13, 2024

Words: 432 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

1. the importance of mental health awareness and support, 2. the implications of neglecting mental health, 3. strategies for promoting mental health and well-being.

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1: Introduction to Health and Wellness

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• Page ID 13334

• Kelly Falcone
• Palomar College

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• 1.1: Dimensions of Wellness Wellness is being in good physical and mental health. Because mental health and physical health are linked, problems in one area can impact the other. At the same time, improving your physical health can also benefit your mental health, and vice versa. It is important to make healthy choices for both your physical and mental well-being. Remember that wellness is not just the absence of illness or stress. You can still strive for wellness even if you are experiencing these challenges in your lif
• 1.2: Healthy People 2020
• 1.3: Major Health Concerns
• 1.4: Risk Factors and Levels of Disease Prevention
• 1.5: Behavior Change and Goal Setting

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Chapter 1: Intro to Health, Wellness, and Change

Are you healthy?

What does being healthy mean to you?

Have you tried setting healthy New Years resolutions or goals?  Did it work?

Welcome to the world of health and wellness!  As you read this book, you will be taken on a learning journey that will continually ask you to reflect on your own life, your health, your wellness, your choices, and your behaviors.  Health is a topic that impacts all of us, thus this learning journey is personal to you and your life experiences.

Chapter 1 Learning Outcomes

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

• Describe the Nine Dimensions of Wellness
• Identify positive actions you could take to increase your wellness in each of the dimensions.
• Employ the skills of Health Literacy
• Explain the leading causes of death along with the risk factors
• Utilize SMART goal setting and action planning for behavior change

What does Health and Wellness mean?

How have you used the word Health or Wellness in your communication with others?  The terms Health and Wellness are often used interchangeably.  What do they mean to you?

Activity: Healthy versus Unhealthy

What do you mean by healthy and unhealthy?

• Take a piece of paper and fold it in half.
• On one side of the paper write “healthy” and the other side write “unhealthy”
• Either make a list or draw pictures of what you consider healthy and unhealthy.

As you review the following information about the wellness,  see if you have an opportunity to expand your list or drawings for aspects of health that may be missing from your list.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity (illness)” and defines wellness as “the optimal state of health of individuals and groups, [1] ”  which may be expressed as “a positive approach to living.” The National Wellness Institute [2] , explains wellness as “an active process through which people become aware of, and make choices toward, a more successful existence.”

The National Wellness Institute states that there is general agreement that:

• Wellness is considered a conscious, self-directed and evolving process of achieving full potential.
• Wellness is multidimensional and holistic, encompassing lifestyle, mental and spiritual well-being, and the environment.
• Wellness is positive and affirming.

The primary difference between health and wellness is that health is your state of being, or a goal to achieve, and wellness is the active process of achieving it through growth and change.  Through wellness we hope to reach our fullest potential of health and well-being.

The Nine Dimensions of Wellness

Both health and wellness are very broad terms.  To help identify ways we can grow and change to reach our optimal health, it is helpful to view wellness in terms of the Nine Dimensions of Wellness.  The Nine Dimensions of Wellness can help to identify ways you can make wellness a part of your everyday life.

The Nine Dimensions of Wellness include: Physical, Emotional, Social, Environmental, Financial, Intellectual, Occupational, Spiritual, and Cultural.  These dimensions of wellness are not isolated, but rather are interconnected.  Problems or challenges in one dimension can impact the other, while the opposite can also be true, that by improving your health and wellness in one area can help to improve other dimensions. For example, your emotional wellness can be positively impacted through exercise (physical wellness) but negatively impacted by financial struggles that often lead to high stress.

Reflection Opportunity:  My Wellness Ratings and Actions

As you read through the following Nine Dimensions of Wellness, give yourself a score from 1 (low) to 10 (high) for your level of wellness in each dimension.  Along with your score, also record a list of possible behaviors you could change or actions you could take that would increase your wellness score for each dimension.

For example:

“For Physical Wellness I would give myself a score of [insert your score 1 being low] out of 10.  I could increase this score by either changing or implementing the following two behaviors:  [insert a behavior you could change or an action you could take] and [insert a behavior you could change or an action you could take]”

Physical Wellness

People who are focused on improving their physical health recognize the need for regular physical activity, they choose healthy foods, go to the doctor, and get adequate sleep.  People who are physically well actively make healthy decisions on a daily basis.  This may include making a habit of exercising three to five times per week or recording their dietary intake to ensure they are receiving proper nutrition for optional health.

How would you rate your physical wellness and what behaviors could you change, or actions could you take, to positively improve your physical wellness?

Emotional Wellness

Coping effectively with life and expressing emotions in an appropriate manner are keys to emotional wellness. An emotionally well person successfully expresses and manages an entire range of feelings, including anger, doubt, hope, joy, desire, fear, and many others. People who are emotionally well maintain a high level of self-esteem. They have a positive body-image and the ability to regulate their feelings. They know where to seek support and help regarding their mental health, including but not limited to, seeking professional counseling services.

How would you rate your emotional wellness and what behaviors could you change, or actions could you take, to positively improve your emotional wellness?

Social Wellness

People who are focused on their social wellness are striving for positive relationships, developing a sense of connection, belonging, and sustained support system.  A socially well person builds healthy relationships based on interdependence, trust, and respect. Those who are socially well have a keen awareness of the feelings of others. They develop a network of friends and co-workers who share a common purpose, and who provide support and validation.

How would you rate your social wellness and what behaviors could you change, or actions could you take, to positively improve your social wellness?

Environmental Wellness

Environmental wellness includes a desire to positively impact our planet Earth and also our local community by  striving to occupy pleasant, healthy, and safe environments that support well-being and positively impact the quality of our surroundings (including protecting and preserving nature).  An environmentally well person appreciates the external cues and stimuli that an environment can provide . People who have achieved environmental wellness recognize the limits to controlling an environment and seek to understand the role an individual plays in the environment.

How would you rate your environmental wellness and what behaviors could you change, or actions could you take, to positively improve your environmental wellness?

Financial Wellness

Financial wellness refers to achieving satisfaction with current and future financial situations by handling finances wisely.  Those who are financially well are fully aware of their current financial state. They set long- and short-term goals regarding finances that will allow them to reach their personal financial goals.

How would you rate your financial wellness and what behaviors could you change, or actions could you take, to positively improve your financial wellness?

Intellectual Wellness

Intellectual wellness includes being open-minded, recognizing creative abilities, and/or finding ways to expand knowledge and skills. Those who enjoy intellectual wellness engage in lifelong learning. They seek knowledge and activities that further develop their critical thinking and heighten global awareness. They engage in activities associated with the arts, philosophy, and reasoning.

How would you rate your intellectual wellness and what behaviors could you change, or actions could you take, to positively improve your intellectual wellness?

Occupational Wellness

Occupational wellness refers to personal fulfillment and enrichment from one’s work and/or responsibilities. An occupationally well person enjoys the pursuit of a career which is fulfilling on a variety of levels. This person finds satisfaction and enrichment in work, while always in pursuit of opportunities to reach the next level of professional success.

How would you rate your occupational wellness and what behaviors could you change, or actions could you take, to positively improve your occupational wellness?

Spiritual Wellness

Spiritual wellness refers to having a sense of purpose and meaning in life, this may come from establishing peace, harmony, and balance in our lives.  People who can be described as spiritually well have identified a core set of beliefs that guide their decision making, and other faith- based endeavors. While firm in their spiritual beliefs, they understand others may have a distinctly different set of guiding principles. They recognize the relationship between spirituality and identity in all individuals.

How would you rate your spiritual wellness and what behaviors could you change, or actions could you take, to positively improve your spiritual wellness?

Cultural Wellness

Cultural wellness refers to the way you interact with others who are different from you.  This includes understanding and celebrating our differences.  Culturally well people are aware of their own cultural background, as well as the diversity and richness present in other cultural backgrounds. Cultural wellness implies understanding, awareness and intrinsic respect for aspects of diversity. A culturally well person acknowledges and accepts the impact of these aspects of diversity on sexual orientation, religion, gender, racial and ethnic backgrounds, age groups, and disabilities

How would you rate your cultural wellness and what behaviors could you change, or actions could you take, to positively improve your cultural wellness?

Check your Learning:  The 9 Dimensions of Wellness

A Healthy Population

How long would you like to live?  What would you like to be able to do throughout life, especially into your later years? Striving for health by implementing wellness practices will impact both your quantity and quality of life.

Leading Causes of Death in the United States

Across the entire U.S. population, Cardiovascular Disease and Cancer are the top two causes of death.  However, variation exists for age and ethnicities.  For example, until age 44 the leading cause of death is unintentional injuries, then between 45-64 the leading cause of death is Cancer followed by Cardiovascular disease, and beginning at age 65 Cardiovascular Disease takes the number one rank [3] .

Table 1.1 includes the top ten causes of death for the years 1900, 1950, 2000, 2010, 2018, and 2020.   2018 was purposefully included to show the difference in causes of death pre-COVID.  In 2020, the list of the top causes shows COVID* taking the spot for the third most deaths.  As you review the data in Table 1, it is helpful to compare the leading cause of death with life expectancy. The life expectancy in 1900 was 48.3 years, by 1950 life expectancy increased to 71.1 years, and from 2010 to 2018 life expectancy remained fairly stable at 78.7 years.  From 1900 to 2000, life expectancy almost doubled and the causes of death changed from causes predominantly related to infectious diseases and sickness, to causes of death highly related to lifestyle choices, like the choice to eat a healthy diet and stay physically active.

Reflection:  Quantity and Quality of Life Then and Now

Have you been able to trace your family tree?  Or have you looked at the family tree of others, maybe a historical figure like Martin Luther King Jr. ?  If you are able to trace your history back in time, something you might notice is how long each of your relatives lived.  Did you know that those born in 1900 lived on average just 47.3 years and by 2000 on average Americans lived to 76.8 years [4] ?  Life expectancy almost doubled in just one century.

Life expectancy is often used a measurement of the overall health of a population. Life expectancy at birth represents the average number of years that a group of infants would live if the group were to experience the age-specific death rates present in the year of birth. Life expectancy averages vary based on many different demographics such as between males and females and regions of the world. Take a moment to review the world life expectancy charts provided by Our World in Data [5]

Have you thought about what actions took place, or healthy goals were achieved, to be able to double life expectancy?

In the early 1900’s, the leading cause of death was infectious diseases, now the leading cause of death is two chronic diseases, cardiovascular disease and cancer.  As a nation and world, several actions were implemented to reduce death from infectious diseases, these actions include clean drinking water, development of medications, development and requirement of vaccines, workplace safety such as wearing hard hats, vehicle safety such as wearing seatbelts.

Read about the Ten Great Public Health Achievements — United States, 2001–2010 [6]

Reflection:  Take a moment and think about how your life would have been different if you were born in 1900.  What would your daily life be like?  What challenges might you face? What might you wish you had that has not been developed yet?  Ask yourself what you have now that you would not have had in the early 1900’s that has increased your quantity and quality of life?

Your Choices, Your Risk:  What is your risk factor?

Many of the risk factors for Cardiovascular Disease and Cancer are related to your lifestyle choices, thus the choices you make may impact your chances of being diagnosed with Cardiovascular Disease and Cancer. Part of learning how to take charge of your health requires understanding your risk factors for different diseases. Risk factors are things in your life that increase your chances of getting a certain disease. Some risk factors are beyond your control, you may be born with them or exposed to them through no fault of your own.

Some risk factors that you have little or no control over include your:

• Family history of a disease
• Sex/gender — male or female

Some risk factors you can control include:

• What you eat
• How much physical activity you get
• Whether you use tobacco
• How much alcohol you drink
• Whether you misuse drugs
• Whether you get good sleep

You can have one risk factor for a disease or you can have many. The more risk factors you have, the more likely you are to get the disease. For example, if you eat healthy, exercise on a regular basis, and control your blood pressure, your chances of getting heart disease are less than if you are diabetic, a smoker, and inactive. To lower your risks, take small steps toward engaging in a healthy lifestyle, and you’ll see big rewards.

People with a family health history of chronic disease may have the most to gain from making lifestyle changes. You can’t change your genes, but you can change behaviors that affect your health, such as smoking, inactivity, and poor eating habits. In many cases, making these changes can reduce your risk of disease even if the disease runs in your family. Another change you can make is to have screening tests, such as mammograms and colorectal cancer screening. These screening tests help detect disease early. People who have a family health history of a chronic disease may benefit the most from screening tests that look for risk factors or early signs of disease. Finding disease early, before symptoms appear, can mean better health in the long run.

Healthy People

We want people to be healthy.  A healthy population is a nations greatest resource, it means a productive population, a prosperous population, and a healthy economy. Your individual commitment to striving for personal wellness may contribute to our national goals for a healthy population!

Every decade since 1980, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has published healthy goals for our U.S. population called the Healthy People initiative.  Healthy People 2030 is the 5th iteration of the Healthy People initiative.  The Healthy People initiative is designed to guide national health promotion and disease prevention efforts to improve the health of the nation.

The 2030 broad goals for this decade include the following:

• Attain healthy, thriving lives and well-being, free of preventable disease, disability, injury and premature death.
• Eliminate health disparities, achieve health equity, and attain health literacy to improve the health and well-being of all.
• Create social, physical, and economic environments that promote attaining full potential for health and well-being for all.
• Promote healthy development, healthy behaviors and well-being across all life stages.
• Engage leadership, key constituents, and the public across multiple sectors to take action and design policies that improve the health and well-being of all.

The five broad goals are further divided into over 400 objectives: 355 core objectives, 115 developmental objectives and 40 newly added research objectives.  The science-based objectives include targets to monitor progress and motivate action.  The Healthy People 2030 objectives were carefully chosen based on national data.  The goal is to work together as a nation to achieve the achieve the objectives and goals to hopefully improve health and well-being nationwide.

Challenge:  Healthy People Goals and You

How might you benefit from the work being done to achieve the Healthy People goals?

Go to the Healthy People website and browse the Healthy People Objectives

Your challenge is to find an objective that either impacts you or a loved one, or is something that you have been curious about.

Click on the objective and begin by reading the overview to gain a better understanding of what they are hoping to achieve and then navigate to the menu item titled Healthy People In Action to see how communities across the nation are working to achieve the goal.  You can then review the Evidence Based Resources to see if you can locate helpful evidence-based resources to achieve the objective.

Health Literacy

The internet brought us the ability to have a wealth of information at our fingertips.  Have you ever felt sick and googled your symptoms to try to self-diagnose your sickness?  Have you been scrolling through your social media and an article popped up promising a cure to obesity with just one simple pill?

With so much information available to us, it is imperative that we understand how to critically evaluate information we see or hear.  The need to be critical consumers of information is reflected in the Healthy People broad goal to “eliminate health disparities, achieve health equity, and attain health literacy to improve the health and well-being of all.”  We need to increase our health literacy.

The CDC defines personal health literacy as the degree to which individuals have the ability to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others [7] . We must be critical consumers of information which starts with evaluating the source of the information.

Evaluating and Finding Health Information

One strategy for assessing a website is to use the CRAAP [8] method which stands for Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose.

As you read information critically, ask yourself the following questions:

Currency: The timeliness of the information.

• When was the information published or posted?
• Has the information been revised or updated?
• Does your topic of interest require current information, or will older sources work as well?
• Are the links functional?

Relevance: The importance of the information for your needs.

• Does the information relate to your topic or answer your question?
• Who is the intended audience?
• Is the information at an appropriate level (i.e. not too elementary or advanced for your needs)?
• Have you looked at a variety of sources before determining this is one you will use?
• Would you be comfortable citing this source in a research paper?

Authority: The source of the information.

• Who is the author/publisher/source/sponsor?
• What are the author’s credentials or organizational affiliations?
• Is the author qualified to write on the topic?
• Is there contact information, such as a publisher or email address?
• Does the URL reveal anything about the author or source? examples: .com .edu .gov .org .net

Accuracy: The reliability, truthfulness and correctness of the content.

• Where does the information come from?
• Is the information supported by evidence?
• Has the information been reviewed or refereed?
• Can you verify any of the information in another source or from personal knowledge?
• Does the language or tone seem unbiased and free of emotion?
• Are there spelling, grammar or typographical errors?

Purpose: The reason the information exists.

• What is the purpose of the information? Is it to inform, teach, sell, entertain or persuade?
• Do the authors/sponsors make their intentions or purpose clear?
• Is the information fact, opinion or propaganda?
• Does the point of view appear objective and impartial?
• Are there political, ideological, cultural, religious, institutional or personal biases?

Examples of Trusted Source of Health Information

The following is a short list of websites that are most likely to pass the CRAAP test for health information:

• The Center for Disease Control and Prevention
• World Health Organization
• PubMed Central (PMC) is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM).
• MyHealthFinder is a prevention and wellness resource that includes evidence-based health information in English and Spanish that’s actionable and easy to use.
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Taking Charge of your health:  Making Healthy Changes

The choices you make each day can impact your quality and quantity of life.  At the beginning of this chapter you were invited to reflect on your health across the Nine Dimensions of Wellness by giving yourself a score from 1-10 that would reflect your health in each dimension from low to high.  You were also invited to identify possible behaviors you could change that would positively impact your health in each dimension.  This is a very helpful activity for helping you to identify what you can do to stay healthy throughout life.  The first step in any behavior change is to recognize what you can and should change.

Are you ready to change your behaviors?

You may be able to quickly identify behaviors your could change to increase your wellness, but you might not be able to quickly begin implementing the change.  Are you ready to change your unhealthy behaviors?

The Stages of Change, also called the Transtheoretical model of behavior change, was developed by Prochaska and DiClemente to help understand the stages a person goes through when trying to make changes in their life.  It assesses an individual’s readiness to implement a healthier behavior, and provides insight into the decision-making process that leads to action.  The five stages include: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance.  You might not go through the stages linearly, rather you might find yourself moving between them, and regressing.  For example, you might first believe you are in the Preparation Stage and then realize you are actually in the Contemplation stage.  Or you might jump into the Action stage beginning the change, and then discontinue with your plan stepping back into the Preparation or Contemplation stage.

As you review the five stages of the Stages of Change, along with characteristics and strategies [9] ,   think about a behavior you’d like to change and identify which stage you are currently in and what you could do to move to the next stage:

Precontemplation Stage (not ready to change): 

People in the precontemplation stage are not intending to take action in the foreseeable future, are not interested in getting help, and can be unaware or do not believe that their behavior is problematic.

• Characteristics: Ignoring or ignorance of the problem, or denying the problem exists.
• Strategies to move to next stage:  Identify the risks to your life if you do not change and take time to analyze or rethink your behaviors and action.

Contemplation Stage (getting ready to change):

People in the contemplation stage are beginning to recognize that their behavior is problematic, be more aware of the consequences of their behavior, and start to look at the pros and cons of either continuing or changing their behavior.  They be more accepting or receptive to information about their unhealthy behavior and more open to learn about ways they could change.

• Characteristics:  Being doubtful or ambivalence of the change, or having conflicted emotions about the change.
• Strategies to move to next stage:  Make a list of the pros and cons of changing your behavior, identify barriers to changing and strategies you could use to overcome the barriers, lastly look for resources that could help you make the change.

Preparation Stage (ready to change):

People in the Preparation stage are intending to take action in the immediate future, they are committed to making changes, and may begin taking small steps toward behavior change by researching to find resources or strategies to help them with their change.  This stage likely includes the development of a behavior change plan.

• Characteristics:  Experimenting with small changes and collecting information about the change.
• Strategies to move to next stage:  Write down your goals, prepare a plan of action, and make a list of motivating statements.

Action Stage (actively changing):

People in the action stage believe they can change and are actively changing their behaviors.  They are open to help, seek support, and work to overcome barriers to stay committed.

• Characteristics:  Direct action toward goal.
• Strategies to move to next stage:  Reward your successes and seek out social support.

Maintenance Stage (maintain change):

People in the  maintenance stage have been able to sustain action for at least six months and are working to prevent relapse into previous unhealthy behaviors.

• Characteristics:  Maintenance of the new behavior and avoiding temptations.
• Strategies to prevent relapse: Developing positive coping strategies for overcoming temptations and remember to continue to reward yourself.

Making the Change with SMART Goal Setting

Have you ever tried to change your behaviors?  Maybe you set a New Years Resolution?  How did it go?

If you have been successful at changing your behaviors it is highly likely that you followed a very specific plan.  If you haven’t been successfully, you likely followed a path similar to what many people do around January first each year which is make broad statements such as “I am going to lose weight this year” or “this is the year I am going to work out” or “I am going to get healthy.”  Each of these statements have a good intent, but are lacking an actual goal or target to achieve. It is like saying you are taking a vacation but haven’t made any plans, haven’t decided where to go, or how you will get there.

Setting SMART goals can help you to have a better chance at being successful with behavior change by giving you direction and a target to achieve.  SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable/Achievable, Realistic, Time-oriented.

Setting a SMART goal requires the goal setter to think about the factors involved in achieving their goal. Defining each of the five characteristics can help to define a pathway to reaching the goal. The more well-defined that pathway becomes, the easier it is to follow.

Create a goal that has a focused and clear path for what you actually need to do. The goal needs to be concrete, detailed, and well defined so that you know where you are going and what to expect when you arrive.   What do you want to accomplish? Why have you set this goal?

Create a goal that provides means of measurement and comparison by using numbers and quantities, this enables you to track your progress. Including measurement lets you know whether or not you have met your goal. How will you measure your progress? How will you know when you have successfully achieved your goal?

Attainable/Achievable

Make sure that your goal is within your capabilities and not too far out of reach. For example, if you have not been physically active for a number of years, it would be highly unlikely that you would be able to achieve a goal of running a marathon within the next month.  Your goal must be feasible and easy to put into action.  Do you have the skills, abilities, or time needed to achieve your goal?

Realistic/Relevant

When deciding on your goal considers constraints such as resources, personnel, and cost. Try to ensure that your goal is something you will be able to continue doing and incorporate as part of your regular routine/lifestyle. For example, if you made a goal to kayak 2 times each week, but don’t have the financial resources to purchase or rent the equipment, no way to transport it, or are not close enough to a body of water in which to partake in kayaking, then this is not going to be feasible. Why do want to achieve the goal?  Is your goal in line with your lifestyle?

Time-Oriented/Time-Bound/Timely

A time frame helps to set boundaries around the objective. Give yourself a target date or deadline in which the goal needs to be met.  This will keep you on track and motivated to reach the goal, while also evaluating your progress. What is your timeline to change?

Moving from Broad to SMART Goals

Here’s are examples of changing from a vague goal to a SMART goal:

• Change “I will workout” to “I will engage in 30 minutes of aerobic physical activity 5 days a week for the next 4 weeks.”
• Change “I will lose weight” to “I will lose weight by tracking my calories every day for the next 2 months and reducing my calorie intake by 10% each week beginning week 1 with 2,000 calories/day intake, week 2 calorie intake 1,800 calories/day, week 3 calorie intake 1,620 calories/day, etc.”
• Change “I will be happier” to “I will increase my happiness by incorporating positive affirmations into my daily life. For the next two months I will begin week 1 with choosing one positive affirmation that I will repeat to myself five times a day.  Each subsequent week I will add another affirmation so that by week 8 I am repeating 8 positive affirmations five times a day.”
• Change “I will go to the gym” to “I will increase my physical activity by doing cardio and weight training at the gym four times a week for the next 10 weeks. I will track my progress by keeping a workout log. I will increase cardio time and weight training reps/sets each week by 5-10%”

Practice Setting SMART Goals

What is a broad goal you would like to achieve?  For example, have you said to yourself or others, “I want to lose weight,” or “I want to eat better.”

Identify a broad goal you would like to achieve and practice changing it to a SMART goal that is Specific, Measurable, Attainable/Achievable, Realistic/Relevant, and Time-oriented/time-bound.

Use might find the following template helpful for developing your SMART goals:

“I will [what is your goal?] by [what will you do? where will you do it? when will you do it?]. I will track my progress by [how will you measure the goal?] for [how long will you do this?].”

Increase Your Opportunity for Successful Change

Behavior change is hard for many reasons.  Here are some strategies to help increase your chances of successfully achieving your health and wellness goals.

Set approach goals instead of avoidance goals [10]

Approach goals are goals where you are taking actions to meet a desired outcome, whereas avoidance goals are focused on not taking actions.  Research has shown that we are more successful when we set approach goals rather than avoidance goals.  For example, rather than setting an avoidance goal such as “I will not drink soda” the focus could be “I will drink water instead of soda.”

Set mastery (learning) goals instead of performance goals [11]

A performance goal might be to lose 20 pounds, whereas a mastery (learning) goal would focus on the actions you are taking to lose weight, such as focusing on your nutrition or exercise. A mastery skill involves increasing existing abilities or learning new skills. Performance goals may be less effective than mastery goals.  It is ok to set a performance goal, but it should always be accompanied by a mastery goal.

Find Your Why

Take a moment to think about why you want to change.  How will this change make your life better?  How will this change help you feel better, have better relationships with yourself and others, or help your family or friends?  You might like to refer to this as finding or discovering your why.

Your Daily Action Plan

If you think about your SMART goal as your destination, how will you get there and what are the directions or what route will you take?  Developing an action plan is a helpful strategy to increase your motivation.  An action plan specifies the what (always a behavior), how much, how often, and usually when (which days and times), in other words it is the steps by which the SMART goal will be achieved.  Your action plan provides you with your goal for each day allowing you to focus on your day-to-day actions rather than just on your long term goal.  This allows you to be successful each day that you complete your stated actions in your action plan.

Boost Your Self Efficacy

Implementing a carefully and thoughtfully crafted action plan  can help to improve health and build your  self efficacy [12] .  Self-Efficacy is the confidence in one’s ability to achieve a specific goal, it is the belief in oneself that you can do it.  Implementing and meeting the goals of your action plan is a great strategy for building your self-efficacy, which in turn builds your motivation to change.

A Positive Mindset

Having a positive mindset can also help to increase your self-efficacy.  This might include focusing on positive self-talk whereby purposefully telling yourself that you can complete your goals.  A positive mindset may also take the form of finding enjoyment in your changes.  When the thought of your change brings you enjoyment, you are more likely to engage in the behavior change and stick to it [13] .

Key Takeaways for Chapter 1

• Your health is your state of well-being.
• Wellness is the active process of achieving health through growth and change.
• Wellness is a broad concept and encompasses nine dimensions: Physical, Emotional, Social, Environmental, Financial, Intellectual, Occupational, Spiritual, and Cultural.
• A healthy population is a nations greatest resource, it means a productive population, a prosperous population, and a healthy economy.
• The top causes of death, cardiovascular disease and cancer, are highly impacted by your lifestyle choices.
• Increasing health literacy is an important skill to ensure people can find, understand, and use valid reliable information to make healthy decisions.
• Everyone is at a different readiness to change and can take steps to actively change unhealthy behaviors.
• Use SMART goal setting to change broad health goals into action oriented goals that you can achieve.

Media Attributions

• Stages-of-change © Toddatkins is licensed under a Public Domain license
• SMART-goals © Dungdm93 is licensed under a CC BY-SA (Attribution ShareAlike) license
• Smith, B. J., Tang, K. C., & Nutbeam, D. (2006). WHO Health Promotion Glossary: new terms. Health Promotion International , 21 (4), 340–345. https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/dal033, retrieved from https://www.who.int/healthpromotion/about/HPR Glossary_New Terms.pdf ↵
• National Wellness Institute. (n.d.). Six Dimensions of Wellness, retrieved from https://nationalwellness.org/resources/six-dimensions-of-wellness/ ↵
• Heron, M. (2021). Deaths : leading causes for 2019. National Vital Statistics Reports , 70 (9). https://doi.org/10.15620/cdc:107021, retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr70/nvsr70-09-508.pdf ↵
• National Center for Health Statistics. (n.d.). FastStats: Life Expectancy . Center for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/life-expectancy.htm ↵
• Max Roser, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Hannah Ritchie (2013) - "Life Expectancy". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy ↵
• Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (2011, May 20). Ten Great Public Health Achievements --- United States, 2001--2010 . https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6019a5.htm  ↵
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.). Health Literacy in Healthy People 2030 | health.gov . Health.Gov. https://health.gov/our-work/national-health-initiatives/healthy-people/healthy-people-2030/health-literacy-healthy-people-2030 ↵
• Attribution CC-BY 4.0:  Evaluating Information – Applying the CRAAP Test, Meriam Library, California State University, Chico, retrieved from https://library.csuchico.edu/sites/default/files/craap-test.pdf ↵
• Raihan N, Cogburn M. Stages of Change Theory. [Updated 2022 Mar 9]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2022 Jan-.  Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK556005/ ↵
• Bailey R. R. (2017). Goal Setting and Action Planning for Health Behavior Change. American journal of lifestyle medicine, 13(6), 615–618. https://doi.org/10.1177/1559827617729634 ↵
• Lorig, K., Laurent, D. D., Plant, K., Krishnan, E., & Ritter, P. L. (2013). The components of action planning and their associations with behavior and health outcomes. Chronic Illness , 10 (1), 50–59. https://doi.org/10.1177/1742395313495572 ↵
• van Cappellen, P., Rice, E. L., Catalino, L. I., & Fredrickson, B. L. (2017). Positive affective processes underlie positive health behaviour change. Psychology & Health, 33(1), 77–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/08870446.2017.1320798 ↵

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TikTok, a now iconoclastic social media platform, hosts millions of videos on health, wellness and physical fitness, including content on postpartum wellness and ‘bouncing back’. At present, few studies analyse the content of postpartum videos urging viewers to bounce-back or the potential influence of these videos. Given the acknowledged relationship between social media use and adverse mental health outcomes (eg, lowered self-esteem, increased stress, disordered eating risk), an investigation of bounce-back-related postpartum content on TikTok explores important intersections between wellness and fitness cultures and the embodied experience of postpartum recovery. Using a qualitative thematic analysis of bounce-back videos (n=175), we explore three themes: (1) Smoothies: eat, but don’t be fat; (2) Bone broth: bounce-back with today’s wellness trends; (3) Fitspo: moving your body matters. Importantly, videos recycle historically constructed thinking about what makes a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ body, invoke vintage diet-culture tropes (ie, drinking water to fill up before eating), and maintain potentially dangerous expectations for caregivers rooted in historical gender, race and class constructs. This results in a postfeminist mishmash of modern maternity practices and traditional hierarchies. Unpacking the historicity of TikTok content assists health practitioners, scholars and users in understanding the potential impacts of video content on new parents, as well as how to flag and contextualise potentially harmful content. Future studies should examine other TikTok subcultures, including teen mothers and trans parents, and explore the messaging directed at and the impact on those communities.

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https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2023-012830

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Since 24 January 2022, ‘officialjuliataylor’s’ 27 s video tracking her postpartum bounce-back transformation has attracted 138.2 thousand views. In the video set to Paloma Faith’s ‘Only Love Can Hurt Like This’, Taylor shows how she used restrictive eating, wellness trends and a daily fitness regime to drop 70 pounds gained during her pregnancy. In the voice-over, Taylor shares that she ‘worked so hard’ for her results. In one scene, punctuated by a glitter emoji, the text reads, ‘Let this be your sign, mama, the body after baby will be even better’. Taylor, a TikTok influencer who runs a workout and meal plan business promising postpartum bounce-back, has nearly 260 thousand followers. Appearing on camera as young, white and seemingly able-bodied, Taylor is conventionally attractive with clear skin, long shiny hair, manicured brows, firm, well-defined arm and leg muscles, and a flat abdomen; she has no visible cellulite, stretch marks or wrinkles. Taylor devotes much of her day to meal planning, prepping and targeted workouts (eg, leg day, back and shoulders day, ‘mom pooch’ workouts). Though Taylor’s professional training and certification are unclear, she offers clients postpartum workout and diet plans that promise to heal diastasis recti (the gap in the abdominal muscles that can remain after pregnancy) and ‘shred fat’.

Taylor’s and other influencers’ messages of postpartum bounce-back represent a unique form of modern maternity. They connect good parenting with restrictive dietary and wellness practices and targeted exercise. Postpartum bounce-back videos on TikTok reflect the latest social media iteration of postfeminist body surveillance, where ‘healthism’ (or the medicalisation of everyday life) becomes a stand-in for institutional and community support. We argue that the self-surveillance and bodily control required to achieve today’s postpartum bounce-back standards regurgitate historical hierarchies in new packaging. TikTok videos directing postpartum individuals on bouncing back promote unrealistic standards of postbaby bodies, reinforcing historically situated pressures to disguise pregnancy and its aftermath. While TikTok can create a sense of community, the process of postpartum bounce-back is presented as individual labour and, therefore, encourages the very social isolation and body comparison correlated with decreases in mental health following the end of a pregnancy.

TikTok, postfeminism and healthism

Social media platforms are used by communities worldwide, given that they are designed to encourage prolonged use and support daily interaction, social connection, self-representation, entertainment and even careers where users monetise their knowledge, everyday experiences, perspectives, appearance and, importantly, for our work, changes to appearance ( Bhandari and Bimo 2022 , 1–2; Harrison 2023 ; TikTok 2023 ). TikTok is the algorithmic grandchild of ‘first generation’ platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter in the early aughts and Instagram in 2010 ( Samur and Christison 2023 ). ‘Born’ in 2017, TikTok is a creation of ByteDance in China, where it is called ‘Douyin’ ( Samur and Christison 2023 ). Released in America in 2019, the app exploded during the COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020. Scholarship on TikTok as a form of new media continues to develop, prompting research in fields from nutrition and psychology to feminist media studies ( Bhandari and Bimo 2022 ; Bauer 2023 ; Hautea et al 2021 ; Hallward, Feng, and Duncan 2023 ; Herrick, Hallward, and Duncan 2021 ; Holtz-Schramek 2023 ; Pryde and Prichard 2022 ; Shi et al 2022 ; Pan, Mu, and Tang 2022 ; Sweeney-Romero 2022 ).

Like other types of social media (such as Facebook and Instagram), TikTok relies on its unique algorithm to construct the user experience in real time. Built-in tools for quickly finding related posts through hashtags or song clips allow users to provide further data to the app and shape the content on their TikTok stream, moment to moment ( Hautea et al 2021 , 3). The app offers an endless stream of short videos (15 s to a few minutes) created and uploaded by users that are live-streamed or looping ( Bhandari and Bimo 2022 ; Hautea et al 2021 , 3). Users are dropped into a new digital stream whenever they open the app. TikTok allows users to post small snippets of life presented in a highly edited fashion, with filtering, background music and other flourishes that glamorise mundane activities, from making a smoothie to styling one’s hair ( Pop et al 2021 ; Siddegowda et al 2023 ). Editing, music and hashtag choice are aimed at landing a video on the ‘for you’ page, which can garner thousands or even millions of views and rocket content creators to virality ( Bauer 2023 , 11, 13; Sweeney-Romero 2022 , 111).

Feminist media studies scholars Holtz-Schramek (2023) ; Bauer (2023) ; Sweeney-Romero (2022) concluded that TikTok’s content has a direct and significant impact on viewers, shaping and reshaping ideas about everything from systems (ie, the political system in America) to ideologies (eg, feminism) to the ubiquitous activities of daily life (eg, what to eat, what is in style). While TikTok is useful for supporting democratic free expression through movements like #BlackLivesMatter and content recording geopolitical crises, it is also a space where influences can use popular templates, music clips and side-by-side editing to spread authoritarian ideals such as #tradwifelife (‘traditional wife life’), which urges a return to the ‘superior’ gender roles of a mythical past ( Bauer 2023 ; Peterson 2023 ).

In a postfeminist context, the pressure to perform traditional femininity, including a heightened surveillance of one’s body, increases. As media scholars Riley, Evans, and Robson (2019) state, ‘postfeminist sensibility genders the weight/ health/ worth disciplinary lens through its construction of femininity’ as daily, bodily control. They contend that neoliberalism and healthism encourage the individual management of one’s health as moral, civic and even appearance (36–46). These imperatives are reflected in various subcommunities on TikTok. One of the ways to engage in healthism is to ‘snap back’ or bounce-back after pregnancy ( Riley, Evans, and Robson 2019 , 99). Holtz-Schramek found that the normalisation of sexy or ‘yummy’ mums, defined by the heteropatriarchal, capitalist gaze, interrupted or complicated communication about breast or chest feeding on TikTok. Videos with the most views contained attractive, privileged white women, undercutting the supposed universality and accessibility of this feeding method. The maternity experience for social media users in a postfeminist context is filled with conflicting messages, including calls for a return to traditional social norms and liberatory suggestions to create the selves and families of our choosing ( Johnson and Quinlan 2019 ).

Available scholarship on the emotional impact of heavy social media use, particularly for health, wellness and fitness content, shows a correlation between use and negative body image and decreased self-esteem ( Siddegowda et al 2023 ; Sweeney-Romero 2022 ; Vall-Roqué, Andrés, and Saldaña 2021 ). Literature exploring postpartum or postpartum bounce-back content on TikTok is unavailable. Given the pressure to bounce-back after birth, the potential mental health risks of intense social media use, and the widespread popularity of TikTok, it is essential to explore the experience of postpartum users on TikTok. To understand how postpartum pressures to bounce-back manifest on TikTok, we asked the following questions:

RQ1: How do postpartum TikTok users bounce-back? RQ2: Is there a historical context for today’s postpartum bounce-back practices in America, and how, if at all, is this reflected in TikTok content?

In the next section, we outline our methodology, including the data collection and analysis process, address our positionality, and discuss potential ethical concerns.

Methodology

Philosophical assumptions/positionality.

Using a constructionist paradigm and a subjectivist epistemology, this study investigates the social, cultural and political dynamics underlying the intersection of #postpartum, #fitness and #nutrition hashtag content on TikTok. An ontology based on relativity assumes a multiplicity of realities shaped by human experiences ( Guba and Lincoln 1994 , 111). Human knowledge and meaning are constructed and transmitted in social contexts like personal exchanges and social media ( Crotty 1998 , 8–9). We assume that knowledge is co-created through transactions between researchers and participants, in this case, through TikTok and between creators ( Guba and Lincoln 1994 , 113–114). The researchers were participants and observers in that we viewed, saved and liked videos based on chosen metrics (see data collection). While saving videos, we simultaneously directed the algorithm that populated our search results. In this way, participation constructed the researchers’ experience of TikTok. Said differently, we instantaneously and continually engaged the algorithmic impact of our choices.

Rigour and trustworthiness in qualitative research rely on researcher reflexivity ( Johnson, Adkins, and Chauvin 2020 , 139). The authors are cis, white, able-bodied women with invisible disabilities who have experienced negative body image or engaged in disordered eating. Our experiences as embodied researchers in a postfeminist context, where femininity and health are supposedly achieved through individual effort and self-policing, shaped our health behaviours before and during this study ( Riley, Evans, and Robson 2019 , 45–48). Throughout the research and analysis, the research team critically assessed our and each other’s views.

Data collection

Johnson and Quinlan set up new TikTok accounts for this project to lessen the algorithmic impact of previous searching behaviour. We viewed, downloaded and analysed the top 214 English-language TikTok videos from 30–31 January 2023, through the ‘Discovery’ tab, beginning our search by entering the hashtags #postpartum, #fitness and #nutrition. The hashtag for ‘postpartum’ also isolated the subcommunity we sought to study ( Bauer 2023 ).

‘Nutrition’ and ‘postpartum’ are terms with histories extending back to the late nineteenth century, allowing us to explore how nutrition practices and postpartum expectations have shifted over time ( Kellogg 1893 ; Leavitt 1986 ; Melendy 1904 ). We discuss these patterns in detail in our findings and discussion sections. Considering post-World War II understandings for maternal health, the research team added ‘fitness’ to reflect emerging expectations that postpartum body shape and size should belie one’s recent pregnancy, a development also explored in our analysis ( Guttmacher 1962 ; Riley, Evans, and Robson 2019 ; Starr 1982 ).

Typing ‘postpartum, nutrition, fitness’ into the ‘discovery’ page produced a video stream from which Johnson and Quinlan viewed, liked and saved videos they found striking, interesting or repetitive. We then saved our ‘liked’ videos in a private collection on the app for review. We understand these interactions (ie, liking and saving) shaped the additional content in our viewing stream, guiding us to videos with a sizeable viewership. Given the complex algorithm that factors in the popularity of the post (eg, likes, comments, shares), the popularity of the creator (eg, number of followers), content liked or engaged within the data collection process, and the device’s geographical location, we understood Johnson’s and Quinlan’s chosen material reflected both a video’s popularity and Johnson’s and Quinlan’s user activity within the collection window ( Herrick, Hallward, and Duncan 2021 , 517).

Given the search terms entered by Johnson and Quinlan, the research team collected many videos with #postpartum as the first hashtag paired with other hashtags related to fitness and nutrition, such as #postpartumweightloss (51 videos), #postpartumbody (43 videos) and #postpartumfitness (32 videos). Quinlan collected 99 and Johnson 115 of 214 videos, including 39 identical videos. The team coded 175 unique videos. After gathering 214 and downloading 175 unique videos, we agreed there was sufficient conceptual depth for our analysis.

Ethical considerations: patient and public involvement

Community content on TikTok’s popular postpartum tags guided our data collection. We examined publicly accessible and downloadable TikTok videos. Users control functions regarding the downloadability of TikTok videos (eg, users can privatise their accounts). Per earlier studies, the approval of content creators was judged unnecessary because TikTok users must agree to a set of terms and conditions that specify third parties’ access to their data ( Eysenbach and Till 2001 , 1103–1105; Herrick, Hallward, and Duncan 2021 , 517; Kenny, Boyle, and Lewis 2020 , 1234–1236; Santarossa et al 2019 , 283–284). We did not receive explicit consent from users to publish this article. Public posts are available to anyone with a TikTok account and through Google searches. Further, TikTok videos regularly populate other social media platforms, including Instagram and YouTube, so virtually anyone can view content from public TikTok accounts, on or off the app. 1

Neither patients nor the public were involved in the design, conduct, reporting or dissemination plans of our research. 2 Johnson, Quinlan, and Curry did not interact with any users during this study by reacting to or commenting on their posts. The authors understand that complex emotions might emerge for TikTok users cited in our analysis. We also acknowledge that TikTok users take similar emotional and social risks each time they post since millions of individuals can view and respond to their posts in negative, even harmful ways. We take a reflexive approach to our analysis, given that it is based on less than 200 videos. Johnson, Quinlan and Curry want this research to support critically engaged posting and consumption of TikTok postpartum content in the future. We are confident that the potential benefits of our research outweigh the costs.

Data analysis

We let the data drive our research, conducting a qualitative thematic analysis ( Braun, Clarke, and Paul 2016 , 1–17; Braun and Clarke 2006 , 4–28). We followed Braun and Clarke’s guidelines to identify patterns, explore themes, determine thematic significance and report on our findings ( Braun and Clarke 2013 ). All authors watched all 175 TikTok videos to familiarise themselves with the data. Johnson and Curry then acted as the primary coders; Quinlan was a secondary coder. Johnson and Quinlan subsequently served as second coders for each other’s hashtags. Johnson and Curry independently coded 20 TikTok videos and then developed a codebook of specific terms categorising similar videos (eg, body transformation, postpartum advice, day-in-the-life, ads). We named each video by its place in the queue—so the first video was Q1, etc. 3 We identified themes and looked at hashtags, likes and bookmark patterns to confirm or complicate these themes.

TikTok produces enormous data streams since each video can include a stationary image, video, text overlay, vocal and musical sound, emojis, hashtags, captions, and commentary ( Bauer 2023 , 7). Given the diverse data forms available in our videos (eg, text, emoji, music overlay, vocal overlay, video-in-video, etc), the selection of 175 samples represents thousands of individual data points ( Johnson, Quinlan, and Pope 2019 , 4–5; Johnson, Quinlan, and Pope 2020 , 327). The collected videos range from <10 s to almost 3 min, but all reference postpartum health in a video’s caption, voice-over or as spoken by the poster. To account for the varying data forms within each video and track how postpartum recovery intersected with fitness and nutrition, we documented multiple data forms for each video (ie, text, emoji, voice-over, music, visual cues).

Our coding process began once the videos were collected. We input each video into the spreadsheet, starting with a queue-based designator, then the poster’s original account handle, and the number of followers, video views, likes, and bookmarks. We tracked the initial and subsequent hashtags in the video caption, and finally, we coded for sound and visuals by ‘scene’. The research team defined a ‘scene’ using the average video length of 36.68 s, and the average number of scenes per video is four, each being around 8 s long. We broke up the videos in our spreadsheet to record the various types of content in each portion of the videos more efficiently. We tracked each scene’s background music, voice-over content and screen text. Next, we described the activity or environment in that video scene (ie, a mother holds the baby during a series of squats in a home/personal gym). After completing these entries for 175 videos, we created a separate spreadsheet to track emoji use in each video. From that data, we tabulated food-based emojis (eg, rice bowl, mango, happy licking face). We returned to these spreadsheets during data analysis, first to guide the creation of our codebook and then to refine our themes.

Using the codebook and resulting spreadsheet, the research team identified three overarching themes on the performance of postpartum bounce-back culture for TikTok users (RQ1), rooted in an understanding of the historical context and precedent for these themes (RQ2). In the following section, we will discuss the themes: (1) Smoothies: eat but don’t be fat; (2) Bone broth: bounce-back with today’s wellness trends; (3) Fitspo: moving your body matters and analyse postpartum bounce-back culture on TikTok.

Our findings demonstrate the cultural performance of postpartum bounce-back culture for TikTok users, shaped by and reflecting the history of American expectations for ‘good’ bodies. When and how did thinness, goodness and parental performance become connected? The health of mothers has long been both a political issue and a rhetorical device, though how health and well-being are defined shifts throughout time ( Chin 2019 ; Riley, Evans, and Robson 2019 ). Much of the available literature focuses on the historical links between individual health and morality and weight, size and gender, or size and race. Mothers were characterised as ‘good’ when they demonstrated piety, self-sacrifice and health, broadly defined. For modern or twentieth-century and twenty-first-century mothers and parents, fatness is synonymous with illness and premature death, so the responsibilities for performing good motherhood include thinness and then thin fitness ( Chin 2019 , 426–430; Farrell 2011 , chp. 3, 7; Gordon 2023 , 25–31; Strings 2019 , chp. 5–8). 4 In what follows, we explore the three major themes we discovered in our data set and offer historical context for content that users might perceive as new or novel.

Many TikTok videos in our data set highlight the complex, ambiguous relationship between body positivity and societal expectations regarding body size. The complicated relationship between motherhood, changing bodies and social value is as long as it is fraught. For more than 150 years, American women’s health was a cause for hand-wringing, as was the virility and strength of the nation’s men ( Bederman 1995 ; Greenberg 2005 ; Kasson 2002 ; Smith-Rosenberg 1986 ). Historian Sabrina Strings demonstrated that today’s notions of thinness and fatness are intricately interwoven with the complex frameworks of ethnicity, race and gender that evolved over centuries. Despite a wide variation among African and European bodies, desirability narrowed to uphold the capitalism of chattel slavery, valuing bodies for breeding versus dowry. Consequently, it is hardly surprising that in nineteenth-century America, black and immigrant women were often depicted as ‘greedy’ and ‘fat’, their bodies symbolising a purported lack of self-control and moral character linked to supposedly insatiable appetites ( Strings 2019 , 207, 215). 5

From the nation’s beginning through the Civil War, Americans were concerned about maintaining the balance between overindulgence and undernourishment. In a time when tuberculosis and other wasting diseases killed many thousands of Americans each year, gaining weight was a sign of health and well-being or the return of health after a long illness ( Hutson 2017 , 289–292; 296–298). As historian David Hutson discovered, physicians continued to thread the conceptual needle throughout the nineteenth century—plumpness exhibits health and youth, but both thinness and corpulence suggest illness ( Hutson 2017 , 289–296). What was healthily plump to one doctor could be corpulent to another; blurred categorical boundaries left health in the eye of the beholder.

With the Second Industrial Revolution, new production methods made food more affordable and shelf-stable. Decades of sanitation efforts and increasingly effective public health measures reduced infant and maternal mortality and dampened the spread of infectious diseases. These changes meant that fewer Americans sought to gain weight for health. The Progressive Era drive for individual and group discipline and efficiency was applied to individual bodies ( Chin 2019 ). As Strings noted, around 1913, scales entered American homes. Suddenly, ‘for the first time in history, weight-conscious Americans could quantify their thinness and their corpulence’ ( Strings 2019 , 261).

By the early 1920s, the slim androgyny that defined the flapper age encouraged scientific calorie counting and reduction, or weight loss ( Chin 2019 ; Farrell 2011 , 107–109; Peters 1918 , 77–87). At World Fairs in the early twentieth century, anthropologists used ‘obesity’ to describe fat bodies as uncivilised or primitive, reflecting harmful stereotypes in the present, which depict fat people as lazy and less intelligent, despite evidence to the contrary ( Farrell 2011 ; Gordon 2023 ; Riley, Evans, and Robson 2019 , 35). Today, the ‘cultural disgust with fat bodies’ links having the ‘wrong’ body with ‘poor citizenship’ and failed femininity ( Riley, Evans, and Robson 2019 , 35, 39–40, 44–46). On TikTok, bouncing back after a pregnancy proves one’s value as a caregiver, parent, and thus, as a citizen protecting individual and familial health.

The first theme, ‘Smoothies: eat but don’t be fat’, examines the portrayal of body positivity alongside the societal pressure to maintain thinness. Sometimes, this pressure is explicit, other times implicit. The second theme, ‘Bone broth: bounce-back with today’s wellness trends’, explores current diet fads and eating expectations in the postpartum bounce-back journey. Lastly, the theme, ‘Fitspo: moving your body matters’, delves into the emphasis on fitness inspiration and its impact on shaping attitudes towards postpartum body image, physical activity and fitness level. The TikTok videos we viewed primarily suggested how to bounce-back, or at the very least, how to perform the effort of bouncing back. The answer seems both simple and dated: diet and exercise. But a close look at the content reveals practices (modern and historical) that can harm viewers’ physical and mental health. Exploring TikTok content with history in mind reveals the longevity of body surveillance during maternity and better explains how these traditions are refashioned and redistributed on TikTok.

Smoothies: eat, but don’t be fat

On TikTok, health performance is varied but nearly always delivered by a person deemed ‘physically fit’ by current social standards. There are dual meanings here; a fit person is not just physically toned and thin enough to reflect a social ideal but imbued with expertise in other arenas. Thus, ‘fit’ bodies are ‘fit’ to guide others in business, politics and even parenting. Yet content creators’ expertise is secondary to views, likes and shares. Content creators need followers to sell their diet plans or workout regimens, and using viral hashtags is crucial for attracting viewers ( Sweeney-Romero 2022 , 108–113). For example, in Video Q11, a content creator delivers health advice using the viral hashtag #whatieatinaday. With 481.7 thousand views, the poster notes that she’s been on a ‘super smoothie kick lately’, showing ‘delicious’ food that ‘passes the taste test’ yet is devoid of dairy, grain-based carbohydrates or sugar. The user’s day includes practices popular on social media platforms, such as body movement, supplement use and hydration. The heavy restriction and intense workout regime reflect an ongoing resistance to fatness and others’ impression that one might be lazy or overly indulgent.

A profound ambivalence haunts much of this content because food is depicted simultaneously as a source of enjoyment and rapid bodily transformation. Many videos described loving or caring for one’s body, paired with still images or videos, emoji and text that included restriction, dietary rigidity and resistance to ‘temptation’ our Victorian forebears would envy. ‘How cute is that cake pop? I didn’t get it, but I did get a cold brew’ (Q11). ‘xokiamatthews’ posted a video showing the ‘smoothies that helped me lose my baby weight’ (Q96). With over 100 thousand followers, this entrepreneur’s video shows a smiling, confident woman recommending vegan protein for smoothies. Smoothies offer a convenient solution for parents striving to optimise their ‘maternal efficiency’ by saving time to devote to other essential tasks, such as childcare. As illustrated by figure 1 smoothies are both 'quick and easy snacks' (Q 100) and effective in preventing 'mindless snacking’, since they serve as fast nutrition for parents attempting to efficiently manage their responsibilities for their new babies (Q 97). In this context, maternal efficiency, a prized, relatively modern value, is wielded to encourage postpartum weight loss rather than alleviate social pressure on new moms/parents ( Cowan 1985 ). 6

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The screen text reads, ‘The smoothie that helped me lose my baby weight’. In Q97 content directly correlates smoothing drinking, weight loss and bounce-back after baby. This image belongs to the TikTok account holder ‘sonyaased5’ (Q97), however, their account has been deleted and a public link is no longer available.

The social pressure to lose pregnancy weight and bounce-back solidified shortly after WWII. The medical links between postpartum recovery and weight loss solidified alongside the corporatisation of the American medical system. Historians traditionally cite the Flexner Report of 1910 as a watershed in American medical history, which altered medical education and practice by rapidly increasing professional standards and licensing requirements ( Morantz-Sanchez 2000 , 242–250; Starr 1982 , 79–179). The formalisation of medical education and the rise of the corporate hospital system encouraged the emergence of new medical specialties (eg, paediatrics) and expanded other subdisciplines like obstetrics which eventually included the preconception, postpartum and menopausal stages ( Apple 2006 , 34–83; Johnson and Quinlan 2019 , 1–18). In this milieu, the ‘return’ of the prepregnancy body became synonymous with postpartum recovery.

However, the focus on postpartum body size was not isolated to medicine because American Cold War discourse compared women in communist countries to those in democracies. This comparison created a new sociopolitical pressure to maintain trimness. In May 1949, a journalist in the Philadelphia Tribune informed readers, ‘In many cases obesity comes on after childbirth because the mother desiring to supply enough food for her baby, overeats and overdrinks’ ( Johnson 1949 , 14). By 1962, Dr Guttmacher’s language in a popular advice book for young married couples captured the new intersection between body size, shape and postpartum bounce-back. Of pregnant wives, he says, ‘if she gains sensibly she will look far more attractive during pregnancy and when it is all over will soon be back to her prepregnant level’ ( Guttmacher 1962 , 106). But he doesn’t stop at gaining sensibly. Guttmacher suggests some patients could use their pregnancy to lose weight, something doctors would not advocate today:

Pregnancy presents an ideal time for the perpetually thin girl to add a few extra pounds and for the chronically fat to subtract several. For the former the physician encourages a total weight gain of thirty to thirty-five pounds, and for the latter a zero gain or even a loss of several pounds is safe and desirable ( Guttmacher 1962 , 106).

It is unlikely Dr Guttmacher thought a pregnant individual could grow a weightless baby. But his comments reveal an overwhelming preference for trim figures during, but especially after, pregnancy. Thus, by the 1960s, America’s postpartum bounce-back age had arrived.

Resurrecting Dr Guttmacher’s recommendations in the 1960s and Dr Kellogg’s recommendations in the 1890s reveals that restrictive eating practices are not new. Then and now, caretakers owe health and fitness to themselves, their family, their community, and, in America, the nation ( Cooper 2021 , 1–10, 51–85; Farrell 2011 , chp. 4; Gordon 2023 , 33–40, 67, 85; Sole-Smith 2023 , chp. 1, 2). According to the TikTok content creators in our data set, health is synonymous with thinness. As a result, content creators encouraged a high level of restriction, which raises significant concerns about the potential impact on TikTok users, especially those with a history of disordered eating or eating disorders ( Pan et al . 2023 ). The videos promoting calorie counting and restriction can be particularly dangerous given the well-established association between self-comparison and increased dieting behaviour ( Davis et al 2023 , 4–5; Fioravanti et al 2023 , 3268–3269). Such content may perpetuate unrealistic body standards and prompt harmful comparisons, leading to feelings of inadequacy and potentially triggering or exacerbating disordered eating patterns ( Pan et al . 2023 ). Restriction is generally ineffective in regulating one’s weight, although the low success rate of achieving and maintaining weight-loss results cannot be gleaned from the content ( Gordon 2023 ; Riley, Evans, and Robson 2019 , 43–45). 7

Few (if any) of our feed’s videos questioned the systemic issues that produce varying body weight and size in the postpartum period. ‘You just have to do it’ is not helpful for those juggling multiple jobs, living in a food desert, lacking access to workout equipment or space, and without reliable and affordable childcare. Compounding these challenges is the uniquely American racial divide in postpartum maternal death—black women are much more likely to die during birth and the postpartum period than white women, even when correcting for class and education ( Falako et al 2023 , 500–503; Taylor 2020 , 506–516; Wint et al 2019 , 109–114). 8 Bouncing back might be a fool’s errand in an industrialised, wealthy country with the highest maternal and postpartum maternal death rates among peer countries.

Social media platforms like TikTok are pivotal in shaping and disseminating dietary and weight loss trends, perpetuating a specific body ideal. For about a century, the American bodily ideal has consistently been thinness, with variations in the most desirable body shape ( Farrell 2011 ; Riley, Evans, and Robson 2019 , 35). The post-WWII links between postpartum slimness, citizenship, and good motherhood are now so diffuse and deeply entrenched that we may take them for granted. Given this history, one might infer that not returning to one’s prebaby body is a personal failing that reflects a similar failing as community members and parents ( Riley, Evans, and Robson 2019 , 44–46). Framed as a healthy, positive goal, bouncing back through dietary restriction is an ongoing practice of self-denial, self-surveillance and control. Those who do not conform to these standards are liable to face judgement, stigmatisation or marginalisation in a society with very high standards for parenting and, especially, mothering ( Peterson 2023 , 85–89; 108–114).

Bone broth: bounce-back with today’s wellness trends

Food restriction is not the only method for transforming one’s body and health after birth. We found dozens of videos focusing on ‘clean’ or ‘healthy’ foods to achieve a new or restored level of health and wellness after the bodily stress of birth. For example, ‘newmothercaregiving’ recommends nourishing postpartum folks in the first 40 days after birth: warm food and drink, nutrient-dense foods (eg, high protein power balls/bites) and ‘easy to digest bone broth’ all ‘made with love’ and ‘served to the mother’ in bed. This is a smaller account of around 11 000 followers, but the content struck a chord, attracting 20 000 views. A mishmash of ancient and modern practices, this content creator combines the ages-old 40-day lying-in period with warm, easy-to-digest foods with the current practice of putting dense, high-protein, high-fibre ingredients into a portable snack. The recommendation to eat easily digestible food to protect individual and family health reflects the long tradition of mothers and other female caretakers ensuring their families have sufficient, nourishing food. However, what counts as adequate and nurturing changes over time and between communities.

American doctors, politicians, religious leaders and others have long extolled the virtues of health and well-being in women—in part to ensure mothers can care for their families and teach them proper habits. As teacher and cookbook author Catharine Beecher stated in 1873, women were both the source and the enforcers of temperate habits and health in the family ( Beecher 1873 ). Sylvester Graham, John H Kellogg and other leaders who became health gurus, health food manufacturers, sanitorium owners and advice manual authors extolled the habits of rejecting alcohol, excessive meat consumption, spicy foods, sexual pleasure and even fashionable clothing ( Armitage 1917 , 51–65; Beecher 1873 ,127-149, 199–300; Kellogg 1893 , 171–189, 215–290; Janik 2015 ; Mas 2017 ). In this late nineteenth-century version of wellness, sanitorium menus revolved around restricting some foods (eg, fried) and increasing servings of others (eg, cereals, water).

Viewing the nutritional content in our data set is far more like studying a time capsule than learning about postpartum nutrition because, historically, foods considered ‘nutritious’ change repeatedly and reflect prejudices around race, class, gender and more ( Wilson 2023 ). For example, the internet is awash with blog posts and websites comparing the nutritional value of kale and collard greens ( Kebede 2016 ). Collards have been associated with black, southern foodways for centuries, and many deem them inferior to other greens today despite their dense nutrient content. Given the politically, economically and racially charged history of food and food production in the USA, we understand video content as both a result of our history and a reflection of the unique cultural and familial traditions important in various communities today. What is ‘nutritious’ or ‘healthy’ still reflects racial and class prejudices made visible in modern nutritional guidelines and emerging health fads ( Johnson and Quinlan 2019 ; Wilson 2023 ).

Many of our videos cited bone broth as a tool to achieve health and wellness goals, even outside the postpartum period. The bone broth trend is often associated with Keto or low-carb diets or autoimmune diets that engage ‘gut healing’ protocols to mitigate inflammation in the digestive tract ( Pham 2023 ). The nutritional value of bone broth remains contested, though its role as a food and medicine in diverse cultures for centuries is well established ( Alcock, Shaw, and Burke 2019 ; Mar-Solís et al 2021 ; McCance, Sheldon, and Widdowson 1934 ). Since bone broth is identified as a ‘superfood’, it is logical that it appears in postpartum bounce-back plans urging ‘nutrient-dense’ or ‘healing’ foods as part of improving wellness.

And bone broth is only one of many high-protein foods this data set highlights. There are nut snacks, high-protein energy balls and ‘protein coffee’ (Q87). Q50 opens with a side-facing body shot and the ‘warning’ that ‘addictive pancakes’ are ‘coming ur way’. The ‘addictive’ pancake recipe that helped ‘ingridduran148’ lose 40 pounds postpartum is vegan and high-protein, relying on Kodiak brand pancake mix and sugar-free syrup. The video shows ‘ingridduran148’ making the pancakes, adding a series of strawberry slices, and drizzling the syrup atop the stack. These look like traditional pancakes, but the message is that meeting postpartum bounce-back goals require substitutions, such as adding plant proteins and removing animal products. According to these content creators, all recipes (eg, pancakes, burgers, salad dressings) need substitutions to make them healthier or ‘cleaner’. But the results are ‘addictive’, ‘yummy’, ‘delicious’, and ‘great for on the go’, ‘quick’, ‘easy’ and ‘simple’; a potent alchemy for postpartum families. 9 Nutrition trends that promise immediate, positive health benefits are frequently based on dubious scientific evidence common in the social media age, just as they were in the golden age of newspapers (1830s–1930s) ( Janik 2015 ). Furthermore, the health impact of specific food choices is still being studied. While the Keto diet has a robust, dedicated following on TikTok and surfaces repeatedly in postpartum bounce-back content, a 2021 meta-analysis of Keto diets used to treat ‘obesity’, cardiovascular disease, type 1 or type 2 diabetes, cancer and other chronic conditions concluded that, for many, the risks outweighed the benefits ( Crosby et al 2021 ). These risks include uncomfortable symptoms such as fatigue, nausea, constipation, and medium-term and long-term impacts such as malnutrition, increased insulin resistance, high cholesterol, anaemia, pancreatitis, cardiomyopathy and more ( Crosby et al 2021 , 4–7).

Again, food-based wellness recommendations reflect a mishmash of historical American medical advice (eg, eat fruits and vegetables and other gentle, non-spicy foods, avoid sugar) and modern iterations of this advice, such as consuming green juice or high-protein energy balls, sipping bone broth to stay full and eating only ‘clean’ or ‘whole’ foods. At four million views, ‘jenniferaffleckk’s’ video on postpartum weight loss, paired with hashtags like #wellness and #momsoftiktok, recommends eating ‘only a protein shake’, a modern choice for breakfast and ‘fill[ing] up with water first’, a relic of early twentieth-century dieting advice. Thus, this video encourages viewers to follow up-to-the-moment nutritional trends while relying on their great-grandmother’s diet methods. Whether relics or fads, engaging in these practices will not necessarily lead to increased wellness, however one defines the term, because wellness practices are not performed in a vacuum. New parents struggling to recover from birth and learning to care for a newborn need a network of relational and institutional supports (eg, fame networks contribute to individual wellness, no wellness practice can replace the range of support postpartum families need. 10

Fitspo: moving your body matters

Food restriction and wellness practices are not the only means of bouncing back after baby. TikTok highlights thousands of content creators offering to help banish the ‘mommy pooch’ and support folks in achieving a fitter body than before pregnancy (eg, ‘officialjuliataylor’). Videos tracking ‘before and after’ content or progress videos fall under ‘fitspo’ or ‘fitspiration’ and are ubiquitous across social media platforms. In our data set, many of these before and after images were taken in public or private gyms during or after a workout (eg, Q9, Q12, Q22, Q55, Q60, Q61, Q80, Q130, Q135).

Popular posters generally adhered to the thin/fit ideal ( Davis et al 2023 , 3–4). Several content creators who met the thin/fit ideal shared posts featuring themselves posing in revealing clothing, accompanied by overlaying text with their current weight, suggesting that whatever their admonitions to ‘love’ post-baby bodies, bounce-back through weight loss is the goal. When urging followers to make ‘healthy’ choices for diet and exercise, with Kanye West’s ‘Stronger’ in the background, ‘theminiboss’ looks into the camera and states, ‘It doesn’t have to be perfect, you just have to do it’ (Q10). The inclusion of a heart emoji suggests she wants viewers to feel empowered, but on day 1 of her #weightlossjourney, the viewers observe a straight-sized, cis, white woman. The social pressures she faces are substantially different from those of a black woman labelled ‘overweight’ after birth. Our social hierarchy is set up to support this poster’s efforts; she works out in a private basement gym in a home she likely owns, while her baby sleeps in a beautifully appointed nursery, which is featured at the start of the video. There is cognitive dissonance here—have patience with yourself while ‘fighting’ your way back to your healthy, muscular body. Somehow, viewers must resist the pressure to do too much too soon yet achieve bodily fitness with a young baby.

Johnson, Quinlan and Curry observed that fitness content creators encouraging postpartum bounce-back culture focused on a narrow range of body modification goals, despite the size of their viewership, which likely includes a range of body types and sizes. As shown in figure 2 postpartum fitspo content creators encouraged building quads and buttocks muscles ( Fioravanti et al 2023 , 3267–3269). Some videos promise followers they can get ‘back to’ their prebaby bodies through exercises that ‘shred’ one’s waist or heal diastasis recti . 11

Content creators pose to exhibit their embodiment of the ‘best’ body type, in this case (Q13), muscular buttocks and thighs, a cinched waist and a chiselled abdomen. Has this video been edited or filtered? It is difficult to tell, providing yet another landmine for viewers comparing their postpartum bodies to those on TikTok. This image belongs to the TikTok account holder ‘bodybyzizzo’ (Q13). It is a screenshot of a publicly available video posted on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@bodybyzizzo/video/7166128053586988334 .

Workout practices ranged from accessible (Q124, the 6-week postpartum workout is rest) to potentially dangerous (Q143, begin working out within 14 days of giving birth). Q17, which features an individual with 80 000 followers and 463 000 views, includes the claim that she lost all her baby weight within 12 days.

Some content creators shared a regime that few would find accessible, and others would find impossible. This content generally included a trifecta of our themes—a restrictive diet, various wellness practices and a series of targeted workouts. In video Q99, the poster describes a postpartum regime that could be described as a profession:

For exercise, I’m lifting weights three times a week…taking daily hot mom walks…using Kim Kelly Fits Skype app…Stairmaster… cold plunging three to four times a week… supplementation, testing my hormones, I add inulin to my coffee, extra fiber, dry brushing, lots of protein, I do my minerals, my omegas, green smoothies, sleeping, meditating reading, nature walks and…sauna.

While account owner ‘laurynbosstick’ might be gratified that over 40 000 viewed this content, these viewers account for only a third of her followers. One could argue that this mother’s commitment to her #momsoftiktok #postpartum fitness journey is commendable. Alternatively, when even sleep must serve the greater goal of bouncing back, it’s clear that the expectations of the present-day postpartum experience are unrealistic and potentially harmful.

Video Q99 also illustrates how workouts are a cornerstone of bouncing back but framed as ineffective as a stand-alone method. We noticed that most fitspo content combined workouts with dietary advice. Q109 shares how someone reached their postpartum goals through lifting, pelvic floor exercises, a calorie deficit and high-intensity interval training.

While exercise assists postpartum recovery, it is vital to consider the timing, context and individual health needs. For those with multiple part-time jobs or shift work, or those who live in a multigenerational home or have other children, an intense fitness and/or wellness regime amounts to an additional part-time job. Through these videos, which condense the time and effort of daily workouts into mere seconds, content creators can prompt comparison that is, at best, not useful and, at worst, triggers worsening mental illness or increased disordered eating ( Hallward, Feng, and Duncan 2023 ; Pryde and Prichard 2022 ; Tang, Tiggemann, and Haines 2022 ).

Considering the fitspo content peddled to postpartum women on TikTok, it is worthwhile to remember how beauty ideals, body expectations and fitness goals emerged within and from our nation’s white supremacist, cissexist, patriarchal history. The pressure to achieve perfect fitness and modern parenting standards is overwhelming and unrealistic, especially in a society that provides inadequate support for new parents. Healthism is well represented in this data set ( Riley, Evans, and Robson 2019 , 36–46). The collected content reflects a neoliberal framing of health as an individual responsibility. But the systems shaping the lives of content creators are silenced in these videos; watching them suggests that bouncing back is a solo project. Yet isolation is its own health risk. Again, individuals following fitspiration videos often engage in self-comparison, which can lead to lower self-esteem, higher anxiety and disordered eating ( Fioravanti et al 2023 , 3267–3269; Pryde and Prichard 2022 , 244–45; Tang, Tiggemann, and Haines 2022 , 2–3).

(Unrestricted) food for thought: discussion

The message that our bodily health and fitness demonstrate our worthiness as mothers, partners, and members of civic society is propaganda at least two centuries in the making.

Historically, connections between health and modern motherhood emerged alongside urbanisation, industrialisation and twentieth-century laboratory-based medicine ( Cowan 1985 ; Leavitt 1984 ; Janik 2015 ; Johnson and Quinlan 2019 ; Starr 1982 ). Of course, it is unlikely that TikTok influencers see themselves as actors in the long arc of our nation’s gender and medical history.

Recent work by authors exploring fatness, the history of fatness in American society and fat activism questions the widespread expectation that individuals should be healthy or try to be healthy since fatness is linked with sickness, immorality, and being a bad mother (eg, laziness, slovenliness) and excess ( Basinger, Quinlan, and Curry 2024 , 12, 14, 17; Basinger, Quinlan, and Rawlings 2023 , 3070, 3072, 3076; Cooper 2021 ; Farrell 2011 ; Gordon 2023 ; Sole-Smith 2023 ; Strings 2019 ). 12 Through this lens, content on bouncing back directed at parents, and specifically mothers, illustrates how one’s health status is imbued with moral values. Therefore, a failure to be thin and thus healthy is suggestive of other personal failings, including the inability to parent well. In Fat Talk , Virginia Sole-Smith demonstrates how parents with fat kids hear from doctors, family members and even strangers that they are parenting poorly ( Sole-Smith 2023 ). Guided by Amy Farrell, Sabrina Strings and others, we acknowledge that antifat bias is shaped by and works in concert with white supremacy, sexism, homophobia and other systems of oppression.

For good or ill, the dietary and exercise choices individuals make after viewing TikTok content can have tangible health consequences. For some, specific exercises may not be suitable, especially if they are breast feeding or have other medical considerations. Calorie deficits may lead to other nutritional difficulties for breast or chest feeders. In the postpartum period, the risks of following popular yet unsanctioned dietary practices could be higher when parents and children experience additional health and wellness challenges (eg, dehydration, exhaustion, low-quality sleep, hormonal fluctuations).

In extreme cases, these health regimes can be deadly. In late July 2023, 39-year-old social media influencer Zhanna Samsonova died of malnutrition after years of promoting a diet of ‘raw tropical fruit’; some of her TikTok videos have more than 800 000 views. While viewers didn’t necessarily follow her advice, Samsonova’s story underscores the risks of following diet, wellness and workout programmes on TikTok without the support and intervention of qualified practitioners. Content creators can have professional training they use to inform video content, but there aren’t barriers to posting health advice if you aren’t qualified. 13

Like much social media content, the claims of TikTok content creators are challenging to verify. Everyday TikTok users are unlikely to have access to paywalled academic research; videos in our data set didn’t discuss body mass index or critique the cultural contexts in which they attempted to bounce-back ( Chansiri and Wongphothiphan 2023 ). The most popular videos were relatable, made by folks discussing how they wanted the best for themselves and their families. Most concluded that bouncing back was hard work but worth every second—however, TikTok’s design results in a limited cross-section of those seconds in day-to-day life. If content creators use medication or other medical interventions to bounce-back, followers won’t know unless this information is shared. Unfortunately, viewers may unknowingly compare their results to individuals using surgery or other methods of body modification.

Our data set did include videos celebrating foods or bodies in a way that rejects bounce-back culture. Viewers were reminded that they can’t expect quick results (Q80), there is a gap between expectations and reality (Q89), and weight is not a signifier of health or postpartum success (Q94). As shown in figure 3 , these videos offer a refreshing perspective that challenges the overwhelming focus on weight loss and working out. ‘postpartumnutritionist’ offers that folks don’t have to ‘fear’ foods like Nutella, a famous chocolate hazelnut spread. This nutritionist urges followers to ‘stop that cycle postpartum’ in favour of eating ‘all the foods, Nutella included’ (Q5). However, with 161 followers, her videos have nowhere near the reach of other postpartum workouts and restrictive diet content.

The screen text reads ‘workout with me @ five days postpartum’, in this screenshot of Q124. A mother sits in bed in comfortable clothing, hydrating and cuddling the newborn. She is resting and has a cart full of resources next to the bed to maximise rest. This image belongs to the TikTok account holder ‘brittandbabiesss’ (Q124). It is a screenshot of a publicly available video posted on TikTok at https://www.tiktok.com/@brittandbabiesss/video/7165210027832118574 .

The difficulties expectant parents face during pregnancy and postpartum are well documented ( Apple 1987 ; Apple 2006 ; Basinger, Quinlan, and Rawlings 2023 ; Johnson and Quinlan 2019 ; Leavitt 1984 ). It is crucial to acknowledge the stress and mental health burdens new parents face ( Johnson and Quinlan 2019 ; Quinlan and Johnson 2020 ). Recognising that sustained and long-term health cannot be attained through extreme dieting or rapid weight loss is also essential. Yet, many new parents seek community online. We must consider the overlapping pressures of postpartum mental health challenges, the lack of social and other supports for postpartum folks, and the physical, emotional and economic demands of bounce-back culture. If searching for community leads postpartum TikTok users to unrealistic diet, wellness and exercise content, viewers are receiving messages that are likely to increase stress and anxiety during a joyful yet fraught time.

Limitations

There are limitations to our findings regarding TikTok and postpartum bounce-back culture. First, our analysis was not repeated later for comparison purposes. This prevented us from capturing potential variations in content over time. Second, we could not track longitudinal trends in content over an extended period. This restricts our ability to discern evolving patterns and changes in portraying postpartum-related subjects. Third, our focus on fitness and nutrition content limits insights into the spectrum of postpartum content available on the platform. Thus, our research did not capture trends over time, compare between subcommunities or focus on under-represented groups like disabled parents. Other relevant aspects, such as emotional support and mental health, may not be adequately represented. Finally, our findings could differ if we explored hashtags like #postpartumsupport. Such searches might reveal unexpected themes and trends.

Future research

Future research might explore the sponsored content (eg, Seed supplements, Kos protein) and exercise programmes content creators offer. The ability to run a small business based on content creation ensures that some messages have an extensive reach, regardless of their mental health impact. A small subset of videos represented teen mothers. Scholars might explore postpartum content and study where it has a differential effect across age groups. Teen moms face unique stressors and emotional difficulties during this time, and sharing their experiences can help others in similar situations feel less alone.

Future research needs to include neurodivergent content creators and other disability communities and their unique experiences with bounce-back culture. Understanding how these communities navigate food, feeding and movement challenges is essential because parents care for young children with a range of disabilities. Another subset focus could be on queer/trans communities. When bodies are sites of political and social transgression for queer folks, perhaps the pressure to bounce-back is different or even non-existent. The awareness that bodies constantly change reflects the fluidity of gender and sexuality and could guide future research questions. Tracking and studying the intersection of identities and embodied experiences as they are expressed on TikTok also offers a corrective to the postfeminist narrative that femininity is monolithic, rendered in the individual rather than communal context, or inherently liberatory once represented on social media platforms ( Bauer 2023 , 15; Holtz-Schramek 2023 , 12–13; Riley, Evans, and Robson 2019 , 46, 55, 98).

There are also possibilities for studies with other data collection methods. Popular songs, hashtags, sayings, and duets come and go quickly on TikTok. Given the rapidity with which trends cycle through the app, scholars might enter the same hashtags into ‘discover’ and capture the top 100–200 videos over time. What trends or themes change over time? TikTok allows scholars multiple ways to engage with the application’s sociocultural and health impacts. Finally, depending on a user’s region, TikTok will display different content, with English-only reels geared towards North American or Western audiences. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the impact of TikTok’s algorithm, and future research should examine this content from non-Western viewpoints to spot variations, discontinuity and the lasting cultural imprint of colonisation.

Push back on bounce-back!

The maternal and postpartum experience in America should produce both trim abdominals and perfectly parented children without much monetary or community assistance ( Garbes 2019 ; Johnson and Quinlan 2019 ). In Q120, ‘ampollo’ urges viewers to work out daily, even if children are underfoot and one only has 10 min; otherwise, folks could become unhealthy, ‘bad’ parents. The push for health at all costs demonstrates the limited choices available to caregivers in a postfeminist American society. The ‘do it anyway’ model makes individuals solely responsible for the physical, psychic, and moral work of health and well-being, while parents are also responsible for their children. Ultimately, these videos further a stark message: we are to perform the work of postpartum bounce-back as if we are endlessly resourced, despite whatever challenges we face. This is not the modern maternity we seek.

Today, we might unwittingly conflate ‘healthy’ or ‘well’ with thinness and ‘fitness’. Viewers should be vigilant about the larger project to control ‘unruly’ bodies, particularly those of women, trans and gender non-conforming people, black folks, other people of colour, immigrants, and others whom binaries cannot easily contain. The long history of the connection between one’s worth or morality with the size and shape of one’s body, socially constructed race, and assigned gender is evident in today’s TikTok content. Expectations that individuals, particularly parents, become or remain thin, trim, healthy and ‘fit’ reflect a backlash to small-scale human rights improvements in the last generation. Meanwhile, the patriarchy, white supremacy, heterosexism, cissexism and ableism upheld by neoliberal institutions are re-inscribed in novel ways on social media platforms. Individuals cannot achieve a fitness, wellness or dietary status that outwits the systems limiting our bodily autonomy and attempting to silence our voices. Healthism will not save us—only building resilient communities can support postpartum parents and re-imagine maternity as we know it.

Ethics statements

Patient consent for publication.

Not applicable.

Ethics approval

This research did not require Institutional Review Board (IRB) oversight because the study only collected publicly available content. The authors followed the Internet Research Ethics Guidelines found in Aline Shakti Franzke et al' s Internet Research: Ethical Guidelines 3.0, from the Association of Internet Researchers (2020).

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the special issue editors for providing early feedback and two anonymous Medical Humanities reviewers for their continued support throughout various versions of this manuscript. The authors also thank Conrad Ng Huff, Maggie McCabe, Carter Williams, Margaret Rawlings, Olivia Sadler and O'Malley Monk, who comprised their team of undergraduate and graduate research assistants.

1. For additional ethics questions or concerns, we followed V.3.0 of the Internet Research Ethics Guidelines found in Aline Shakti Franzke et al’s , Internet Research: Ethical Guidelines 3.0, Association of Internet Researchers (2020).

2. This patient and public involvement statement is included at the request of Medical Humanities. For more details on our approach and ethical framing, readers can review the rest of the section. Please feel free to contact the corresponding author with further questions.

3. We included other signifiers as well, which we don’t use in this paper, including ‘R’ for repeat to identify videos the Johnson and Quinlan collected. Since we did not code those twice, the initial identifier of ‘Q’ and the video number is sufficient to locate the video in our data set. Curry used this tiered naming device to ensure we did not double-code any of our content, thus diluting the importance of individual videos.

4. Strings offers a nuanced reading of these connections in that she shows how thinness and godliness, and civic virtue were linked in chapter 6; in chapter 7 she discusses Kellogg’s work and the idea of having a pure diet to contain one’s appetites, as well as prepare for motherhood. Conversely, she cites advice to stop dieting to prepare for motherhood but return to restriction in middle age once the bloom of youth is gone and multiple pregnancies added unnecessary girth. Like Hutson, Strings observed practitioners trying to define a middle ground between plump and corpulent, lithe and sickly.

5. Strings notes that ethnologist James Cowles Prichard described Irish folks as ‘part African’ and ‘part Asiatic’ and that in America, for the first few decades of Irish immigration, Irish women were characterised as irredeemably greedy and fat.

6. Cowan argues throughout her book that increasingly efficient technology didn’t lighten the inhome workload; paradoxically, it raised standards for cleanliness, quality, freshness, variety of food and more.

7. Some body transformation videos with the highest reach in our data set were Q98, which had 400 000 plus views, Q77 with 600 000 views, and Q88 with 1.2 million views. As Gordon argues throughout You Just Need to Lose Weight, a host of factors, including epigenetic mechanisms, we still do not understand the impact of individual environments and genetic profiles as they pertain to weight loss.

8. Falako et al (2023) , ‘Utilising Community-centred Approaches to Address Black Maternal Morality,’ Health Education and Behaviour 50, no. 4 (2023); Taylor (2020) , ‘Structural Racism and Maternal Health Among Black Women’, The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 48, no. 3 (2020); Wint et al (2019) , ‘Experiences of Community Doulas Working with Low-Income, African American Mothers’, Health Equity 3, no. 1 (2019).

9. Out of the videos that focused on postpartum nutrition/diet/recipe content, here are examples for each term: ‘addictive’ (Q50), ‘yummy’ (Q34) and ‘delicious’ (Q20, Q31, Q34, Q48, Q52, Q100, Q146), but also ‘great for on the go’ (Q50), ‘quick’ (Q48, Q100), ‘easy’ (Q30, Q48, Q100, Q146) and ‘simple’ (Q52, Q100).

10. Sweeney-Romero (2022) , ‘Wellness TikTok’, in TikTok Cultures in USA, (2022). In this chapter, Sweeney-Romero also notes the problems with TikTok’s aspirational wellness content, which ‘merge elements of commercial and community spheres’ by creating an online persona that viewers might relate to, even though content creators might post heavily edited and unrealistic content (p. 113).

11. Importantly, some videos addressed other symptoms of the weakened core musculature typical in the postpartum period. For example, Q159 references lower back pain, and Q150 lists ‘urinary leaking, pain with intercourse’.

12. On page 3076 the authors state these links explicitly: ‘Generally, providers think of larger people unfavourably and assume that people at higher weights are greedy, lazy, unhealthy and immoral’, and they cite three other studies where researchers found similar prejudices against fat patients. Gordon (2023) also references a range of studies where doctors characterise their fat patients as lazy and resistant to lifestyle changes.

13. The practice of listing one’s qualifications is a complex issue. For example, ClaireTheNutritionist, with nearly 350 000 followers, lists her qualifications as ‘gut+wellness Certified Nutritionist, NTP, BFA’. TikTok users are unlikely to know the difference between a registered dietician and a certificate in nutrition, which is much easier to access and does not require graduate study. The other qualifications here might seem related to food and wellness, but a BFA is a bachelor’s in fine arts, and ‘NTP’ refers to a ‘National Title Professional’ trained in legal land transfer. While this shows a range of skill sets and interests, it does not follow that this person is as qualified as a dietician who can apply dietary studies' quantitative or qualitative findings in her content. TikTok does not require account holders to provide proof of their qualifications, so content creators are free to make whatever claims they desire.

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Contributors BLJ and MMQ conceived of the presented study. BLJ, MMQ and AC contributed to the research implementation and analysis of the results. BLJ led the writing, but all authors wrote portions of the manuscript and edited the manuscript. BLJ is the guarantor of the paper.

Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Competing interests None declared.

Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

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Ohio presidential symposium focus on the impact of First Ladies          

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Slated for July 19-20, 2024, in Marion, Ohio, the annual Warren G. Harding Symposium reflects on the compelling influence of America's First Ladies throughout history. Their strength, grace, and leadership that continues to shape our nation's narrative. The Ohio State University at Marion, the Harding Presidential Sites, and Ohio History Connection have partnered to present the 2024 Warren G. Harding Symposium,  Taft, Wilson and Harding: First Ladies of Consequence .

This exciting event features respected scholars, authors, and historians including Harding Presidential Sites Manager, author and researcher, Sherry Hall; Dr. Rafaele Fierro, author of “Helen Herron Taft: Forgotten Impact of Memorable First Lady”; Rebecca Boggs Roberts, author of “Untold Power:  The Fascinating Rise and Complex Legacy of First Lady Edith Galt Wilson"; and Jonathan Andersen, Harding Presidential Sites historian and researcher. According to organizers this group of featured symposium workshop speakers will focus on a remarkable group of American First Ladies, each of whom faced difficult challenges and were able to leave an indelible mark on a fascinating era in the United States presidency.   Helen Herron “Nellie” Taft was one of her husband’s most astute and trusted advisors and was influential in many presidential decisions. She also gave the Taft administration a particular social brilliance.  Ellen Wilson, the first wife of President Woodrow Wilson, played a major role in his career.  She significantly changed the traditional role of the First Lady through her efforts to improve housing conditions for African Americans in Washington, D.C.  Edith Galt Wilson was the president’s second wife.  When her husband suffered a severe stroke, she functionally ran the Executive Branch of the government for the remainder of his presidency.  Florence Harding was strong-willed and popular and had a major impact on her husband’s business and political careers.  As First Lady, she opened the White House and grounds to the public and advocated for the rights of women and veterans.

This annual event, which attracts visitors to Marion, Ohio from across the country and beyond, will explore impact of these notable women in the history and the impact the made on our country in the early 20th century. The symposium features a Friday evening opening reception at Warren G. Harding Presidential Library and Museum, the annual Presidential Wreath-Laying Ceremony at the Harding Memorial, three workshop sessions with outstanding scholars with unique insights into the U.S. presidency and presidential politics, and a concluding dinner program and panel discussion with experts, as well as guided tours of the Harding Presidential Sites. 

A complete event schedule, pricing, and a link to registration for the symposium can be found at  https://go.osu.edu/harding . Registration must be completed online and is open through Friday, July 12, 2024. Seating at the reception and dinner are limited, so patrons are encouraged to register early.  If you have questions, please contact Symposium Chairman, C. Gary Iams at 740-360-7166 or by email at [email protected] or Ohio State Marion Development & Community Relations at 740-725-6340 or by email at  [email protected] .