Medicine and Health Commons^™

Consumer Representative Experiences Of Partnership With Health Workers In Australia, Coralie R. Wales, Judith A. Lababedi, Alison Coles, Philip Lee, Emma Clarke

Patient Experience Journal

We examine the experiences of Consumer Representatives participating in consumer engagement activities across a public health service in NSW, Australia. A team of Consumer Representatives and staff members use a participatory, constructivist paradigm and a hermeneutic phenomenological approach to analyse ten interviews with Consumer Representatives over three years 2017-2019, and three focus groups in 2020. We explore these experiences and identify the linked contextual factors from their points of view. Consumer Representatives were prepared to invest their time, but they needed respect. “Respect” from a consumer perspective was being meaningfully included, supported and heard, and activities needed to be purposeful …

Food-As-Medicine: An Everyday Strategy Of Health, Rachel Rebecca Bogan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Using food-as-medicine, a valuable strategy of health, as its focus, this dissertation examines why and how New Yorkers use food to negotiate their health. I argue that while using food medicinally is a common health practice, food-as-medicine operates unequally among different groups of New Yorkers. I attribute this inequity, in part, to how those in power, including public health experts, biomedical doctors, and the food industry, operationalize food-as-medicine as a health remedy and to a neoliberal, healthist context that ties people’s morally “correct” uses of food-as-medicine to their abilities to access “good” citizenship and optimal health.

I chose to write …

Make Your Wishes Known: Understanding The Challenges And Barriers For Providing Effective Ethics Consults To Low-Income African American Men, Ruth Nwefo

Symposium of Student Scholars

The distrust of the U.S. health care system is prevalent, especially within the African American (AA) community. This distrust is largely based on infamous cases such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment and experiments conducted by James Marion Sims on slave women without anesthesia. While these experiments along with many others further advanced medicine, they severed trust between health care institutions and the African American community, bringing upon repercussions still felt today. Although many steps have been taken to rebuild trust in the health care system by establishing effective ethical guidelines, more needs to be done in terms of rebuilding the …

African Immigrants' Mental Health In Canada, Jessica O. Omorodion

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

African immigrants are the fastest growing immigrant population in Canada. However, they are still extremely under-researched especially in regards to their understandings and experiences with mental health. This is important to look at due to the stark differences between Canadian African views on mental health. Current literature shows that while African immigrants are self-reporting as having above average mental health, there are still taboos and discriminatory concerns that exist as a barrier to transparency with it. This research will utilize the Stata software to analyze the Canadian Community Health Survey (2017) to further look at African mental health in order …

Female Infertility In The United States And India: An Analysis Of Treatment Barriers And Coping Strategies, Devneet Singh

Honors Theses

This research studies barriers to accessing fertility treatment in the United States (U.S.) and India, as well as the coping strategies infertile women use. Barriers include reproductive health knowledge, cost, and politics, while coping is affected by cultural stigma, family, and religion. These two countries were chosen for their different cultural contexts, healthcare systems, and political infrastructure. Ten fertility specialists across both countries were interviewed as expert informants. Reproductive health knowledge was the most important barrier to accessing care in both countries, with similar gaps in understanding when and what type of care to utilize, though social media can educate …

Anti-Intellectualism And American Fears: An Analysis Of Social And Political Factors That Influence Distrust In Scientific Authority, Naomi Hill

Political Science Student Papers and Posters

In the last few decades of our history, strong sentiments of anti-intellectualism and distrust in scientific authority have developed and spread throughout American society. Recently, the outward displays of denial and distrust surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change have demonstrated just how pervasive these views are becoming. This study looked at public opinion on a variety of anti-intellectual views among the American public. The main question this research was attempting to answer is what are the political and social correlates of anti-intellectualism? The data I used to test this question was the 2021 Chapman University Survey on American Fears. …

Exploring Social Determinants Of Covid-19 Related Sickness And Suffering In The Bronx, Hamida Chumpa

Student Theses and Dissertations

Through a positivistic and phenomenological approach, the study examines social determinants of COVID-19 related sickness and suffering in the Bronx, New York City, New York, ZIP codes 10462, 10472, 10467, 10458, 10474, and 10464. I utilize a violence paradigm (structural and everyday violence) to describe the social determinants of risk and sickness-related suffering and deploy an assemblage framework to shed light on how these determinants create negative synergies that undermine wellbeing and render certain communities vulnerable to extreme suffering. The mixed methods include 64 surveys and eight interviews. Analysis methods include a descriptive analysis of survey results and a thematic …

Racial/Ethnic Differences In The Benefit Of Social Networks On Anxiety Symptoms, Melissa Vargas Calderon, Jennifer Robinette

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Anxiety is a pressing health concern, affecting 40 million adults in the United States every year. Interestingly, communities of color have lower rates of anxiety disorders relative to Non-Hispanic Whites, despite on average experiencing more lifetime adversity characteristic of members of marginalized groups, such as low socioeconomic status and discrimination. Research indicates that contact with one’s social network, particularly large, closely knit ones among Hispanics, are protective factors against anxiety. However, empirical investigations of racial/ethnic differences in the benefits of social networks on anxiety are lacking. Data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally representative sample of adults …

Sars-Cov-2 And The (Dark) Future Of Society: A Machiavellian Approach To The End Of Body Sovereignty And The Beginning Of Bio-Feudalism, Andrea Molle

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

As much as the event following 9/11 triggered massive changes in our understanding of privacy rights and increased our level of acceptance of government infringement on individuals’ freedom, the pandemic of the SARS-COV-2 is threatening to change our understanding of societal hierarchy and democratic process. In this essay, we imagine a society where two classes, defined by their susceptibility to infection, emerge, and a neo-feudal system is established. We suggest that it is possible to evaluate how likely a dystopian outcome is by using Machiavelli’s understanding of the impact of the Plague on medieval Florence. We also recommend following his …

Global Cultural Shifts Induced By Covid-19, Wenshan Jia

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

"While COVID-19 has reportedly been bringing about numerous changes in geopolitics, economy, health, and security around the world, little has been written about changes in cultural practices it has been bringing about. I hereby unravel such emerging changes in the hope that readers could adapt to such changes."