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Promoting Resilience In Economically Disadvantaged Adolescents Through School-Based Expressive Arts Groups, Bailey Knox

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Since 2013, the majority of students served by the public school system in the United States have been considered “low-income” by the federal government. The stressors associated with low socioeconomic status significantly increase risk for social, emotional and behavioral challenges at all age levels, but can be particularly damaging to adolescents coping with heightened stress levels related to the intense multi-dimensional changes that define this developmental period. As the correlation between economic disadvantage and negative socio-emotional and academic outcomes is increasingly evidenced, schools have begun to recognize their responsibility for providing preventative mental health care to high-risk students. Over the …

A Multi-Faceted Intervention To Improve Diagnosis And Treatment Rates Of Overweight And Obesity By Nurse Practitioners In Primary Care, Susan Disser

Evidence-Based Practice Project Reports

The United States is amid an obesity epidemic (Institute of Medicine, 2012). Indiana ranks as the tenth most overweight state. (America’s Health Rankings, 2018). Despite guidelines outlining the treatment of obesity, primary care providers seldom use these guidelines (Hayes et al., 2017). In a 2010 study, only 28.9% of obese patients received a diagnosis of obesity and less than 25% of these patients received counseling on diet, exercise, or weight loss (Bleich, Pickett-Blackely, & Cooper, 2011). The purpose of this evidence-based practice (EBP) project is to determine if a multi-faceted intervention consisting of academic detailing, reminders, audit with feedback, and …

The Ability Of The U.S. Military’S Wbgt-Based Flag System To Recommend Safe Heat Stress Exposures, David R. Almario

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The U.S. military currently uses a flag system based on wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) and metabolic rate to recommend heat stress exposure limits. This paper addresses the ability of the flag system to recommend safe heat exposures in a non-military population.

Two progressive heat stress studies provided data on 528 observations of safe or unsafe exposures of 4 hours over a range of WBGT conditions and metabolic rates using 29 participants wearing woven cotton clothing. For the two studies, range of WBGT conditions was 25 to 42C, and the range of metabolic rates was 100 to 650 watts. These exposures …

What Does It Meme? A Qualitative Analysis Of Adolescents’ Perceptions Of Tobacco And Marijuana Messaging, Jessica Liu

Public Health Theses

With increasing popularity of e-cigarettes and legalization of marijuana, messaging from online sites and platforms are shaping product perceptions and use. Quantitative studies have examined social media statistics of posts; however, there is a lack of research explaining the aesthetic appeal of these advertisements from the adolescents and young adults (AYA) perspective.

Twenty-four participants were recruited from a larger study of adolescents' perceptions and tobacco use (N=772 high school students). Participants were grouped by whether or not they had used tobacco or marijuana products before, with N=8 non-users and N=16 users. Data were collected through individual semi-structured interviews, where participants …

Oromo Ethiopians Perceptions Of The Prevalence, Causes, Treatment And Prevention Of Trachoma, Linda L. Gross

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In Ethiopia, one of the primary contributors to blindness is trachoma, which is an infectious ocular disease. There is no record of any prevention programs in rural Ethiopian villages of Oromia, where the prevalence of trachoma is high. The original purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the perceptions of rural Oromo villagers in Ethiopia on the causes, treatment, and prevention of trachoma, using the health belief model and the social-ecological model as a theoretical framework. Due to a security situation in Ethiopia, final interviews were conducted with immigrant Ethiopians in the US, all of them from the trachoma-endemic …

Characteristics Of Young People Seen In The Emergency Department For Assault-Related Injuries, Robyn Coons

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Violence is among the most serious threats to the health and safety of young people between the ages of 10 and 24 in the United States. The purpose of this cross-sectional quantitative study using secondary data from the CDC's 2015 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS) data set was to examine the characteristics (age, sex, race and ethnicity, insurance or payer source, and housing status) of young people between the ages of 10 and 24 who seek medical care for assault-related injuries through the emergency department (ED). The social ecological model was used to examine the complex interplay between …

Reducing Child Maltreatment Through Prevention, Chantel Marie Eckert

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Child maltreatment is a public health problem directly linked to poor outcomes across the lifespan, including chronic health conditions and even death. The local population served by the agency in which the project took place experienced an increase in reports of child maltreatment. Agency leadership identified deficiencies in parental knowledge about positive parenting practices as a contributing factor to the problem. To address the problem, the agency implemented a quality improvement evidence-based home visiting pilot initiative. The evaluation of that initiative was the purpose of this project. Bandura's social cognitive learning theory provided the theoretical framework for the project, and …

Preventing Interpersonal Violence At The University Of Kentucky: A Community-Level Expansion Of The Green Dot Program, Chelsey Reid

Theses and Dissertations--Public Health (M.P.H. & Dr.P.H.)

College students in the United States are at risk for being impacted by interpersonal violence (IPV), a spectrum of violence that includes sexual assault, dating violence, domestic violence, and stalking, with 1 in 5 women and 1 in 16 men being impacted by victimization during their collegiate careers. Through enhanced approaches to primary prevention, including through active bystander training, research has identified evidence-based strategies for reducing IPV prevalence. In Kentucky, 10.1% of all women impacted by IPV are first victimized prior to 18-years-old and 12.4% of all completed rapes are either alcohol or drug-facilitated. In light of these cumulative data, …

A Comparison Of Pediatric Prevention Policies To Pediatric Health Supervision Codes, Rania Burke

Theses and Dissertations--Public Health (M.P.H. & Dr.P.H.)

The number of policy statements from the AAP presents pediatricians with an increasing amount of advice related to prevention, yet the definition of prevention and well-child visits has not changed for outpatient office visits. Outpatient office visits are the primary means by which preventive care is administered. The objective of this study is to quantify and characterize the prevention policy recommendations that pediatricians are expected to provide patients/guardians beyond the well-child visit. Secondarily, an analysis was completed to demonstrate which prevention policies make recommendations that can be coded for reimbursement as part of a well-child prevention visit.

METHODS The author …