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Education news and issues in the Ozarks.

Do you control your health?

Your health can be affected by so many things. Genetics, diet, stress, the people around you - just to name a few.

Dr. Kyler Sherman Wilkins, assistant professor of sociology at Missouri State University, is a social demographer who is interested in the distribution of health in Americans.

"Health outcomes are not randomly distributed across the population. We know that people of color, women and sexual minorities are at greater risk for variety of different health problems than their white straight male counterparts," said Sherman Wilkins. "The question now is not so much what is the disparity, but why is there a disparity?"

One of his recent studies was about identifying loneliness in the workplace and learning to mitigate it in order to develop a happier, healthier, and more productive workforce. He shares about the links between loneliness and physical health.

"If we ignore loneliness as something that individuals just face on their own, they just need to toughen up and get over it, I think we're missing an opportunity to really improve the health of the population," he said.

Nicki received a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Business Administration from Missouri State in marketing, in 2002 and 2004 respectively. After gaining experience in writing, marketing, special event planning, fundraising and public relations, she returned to the university to work in the office of strategic communication. There she tells the university’s story by sharing the stories of individuals at Missouri State.
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