Medical Humanities Commons^™

The Effectiveness Of Needle Exchange Programs In The United States And West Virginia, Margie J. Phillips

Margie J. Phillips

Needle Exchange Programs (NEPs) have been controversial aspects of public health care due to conflicting beliefs and opinions for public policies. NEPs have allowed Injection Drug Users the ability to exchange their used equipment for clean, unused supplies. Research into the effectiveness of needle exchange programs and the impact it has had on the reduction of HIV and viral hepatitis infections in people who inject drugs. Injection Drug Users have accounted for 10% of HIV transmission cases in West Virginia, and this state has been ranked as the highest in the whole United States for incidents of Hepatitis C. NEPs ...

Multiracial Patient Experiences With Racial Microaggressions In Health Care Settings, Cyndy R. Snyder, Prince Z. Wang, Anjali R. Truitt

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

Purpose: Illuminating patients’ experiences of microaggressions in health care settings can help practitioners develop care that is more culturally responsive. While much of the literature on health care disparities focuses on minority groups generally, we sought to identify and to describe the ways in which racial microaggressions manifest for multiracial individuals and families specifically.

Methods: Using a combination of interviews and focus groups, we conducted 15 interviews and 3 focus groups. Eligible participants self-identified as more than one race and/or they self-identified as part of an interracial family, and they and/or someone they considered to be part of ...

Mother Nature, Breanna M. Glynn

Akesis

Mother Nature is our greatest teacher in the lesson of patience and new growth. She makes us wait for the sweet moments, but when they come how lucky we are to bear witness to her beauty. She renews life, and breaths fresh air into the dead leaves that winter has plastered onto the ground. She reminds us that with death, comes more vibrant and boisterous life. We just need to sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

Boompa, Breanna M. Glynn

Akesis

My Boompa was my mother's father, and my beloved grandfather. He passed away this April just after his 85th birthday. He, and the rest of the family, thought he would make it to at least 100. Boompa was one of the greatest people I will ever meet. Yea, sure, a lot of people say that, but I really mean it. He was the most kind, genuine, empathetic, hardworking man, always taking care of others first. This photo is a picture of the eucalyptus and pussy willows that were in the floral arrangement that laid over his coffin during his ...

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim ...

Four Sights Of The Patient (Ophelia), Cecily Ann Fergeson

Graduate School of Art Theses

I make work in a variety of media, largely dealing with the imagery and material of the human body. My current work attempts to reckon with the following subjects: a reclamation of the notion of the so-called medical gaze and its historical record in photography; the idea that receiving the medical gaze transforms patients’ bodies; the idea of illness as an uncanny and intimate experience; and, finally, the act of metaphorically retracing the body’s material journey through the medical institution as it exists today. In this text, I discuss my practice in the context of critical theory, a recent ...

Friends Of The Poppy: An Ethical Exploration Of Opioid Addiction, Emma Goldblatt

Sound Decisions: An Undergraduate Bioethics Journal

Scientists and philosophers have been puzzling over the root of addiction for centuries. In the past, addiction was seen as a moral failing, a choice and an inevitability for certain people. Since then, science has shown us that social circumstance and physiological dependency are much better explanations for why addiction develops and persists. This has come into the conversation surrounding the current American opioid epidemic. It is spoken about in medical terms and is being addressed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, both of which would not be possible without defining addiction as a disease. Addiction is more ...

The Influence Of Visuospatial Intervention On Mathematical Ability, Tiffany Bui, Matthew Eclevia, Cody Shishido, Jessica Walker

Student Research Day Abstracts and Posters

The research proposal of this study intends to identify whether visuospatial interventions improve mathematical ability in college students. Visuospatial skills are important for identifying the distance between two objects, memory of images, and visualizing objects by mentally rotating them. The two important concepts relating to visuospatial ability are spatial relations and spatial visualizations. These are the abilities to mentally rotate two dimensional and three dimensional objects. Prior research has shown that visuospatial interventions are an effective tool for the improvement mathematical performance. This study is designed to see whether mathematical aptitude improves from pre-test to post-test after participation in visuospatial ...

Doing Well By Doing Good Benefits For The Benefactor, Aneka Khilnani

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review

This study seeks to examine if volunteering affects mental and physical health and examine if health behaviors or social participation affect the association between volunteering and perceived mental and physical health.

Method and Data: Using a logistic regression model, data from a cross-sectional study that obtained a statewide representative sample of Texas adults, N=1409, was used to predict an adult’s perceived mental and physical health in relation to volunteering, after controlling for the effects of health behaviors and social participation.

Results: Adults who do not volunteer have an increased odds of reporting poor perceived physical and mental health ...

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review Spring 2018

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review

No abstract provided.

The Ethical Justification Of Equal Candidacy For Organ Transplantation In Alcoholic Patients, Peter A. Depergola Ii

Online Journal of Health Ethics

An increasingly blurred understanding of the distinctive challenges posed to transplantation medicine and, by extension, public health, by the debilitating reality of alcoholism suggests a critical need to revisit the relationship between causality, candidacy, and culpability in light of substance addiction. This essay grounds its arguments in two, straightforward premises: (i) compassionate medical practice - understood as the sympathetic willingness to enter into the existential suffering of another in order to ameliorate the anguish invoked by disease - rests on the fiduciary relationship shared between provider and patient; and (ii) allocating medical goods according to moral desert rather than existential disposition undermines ...

Should Doctors Take Into Account Human Races? A Medical Ethics Approach, Gabriel Andrade

Online Journal of Health Ethics

Racial discrimination has some very harmful social effects. But, can discrimination in medicine lead to good outcomes? This is an emerging question in medical ethics. It is undoubtedly true that some individuals are more genetically prone to some diseases than others. But, we should not rush to judgment, and believe that race may be a good guide in order to discover what diseases an individual is more susceptible to. Illnesses such as sickle cell-anemia and Tay Sachs disease have long been thought to have a racial correspondence. This is in fact not true. There have also been attempts to prescribe ...

A Change Of Heart: Internal Narratives, Forgiveness & Health, Keiko Ehret

Master's Theses and Capstone Projects

In this thesis I investigate the interconnectedness of forgiveness as a narrative, as a philosophical, religious and cultural phenomenon, and the ways in which forgiveness is increasingly being used as a vehicle for improving health and psychological well-being. By threading together how scholars in a variety of fields have approached these areas of study, we can better understand the way the interdisciplinary nature of forgiveness grants access to heal not merely relationships with others, but also our bodies, our minds, and our relationship with ourselves.

Important to my investigation is understanding that the life circumstances that prompt forgiveness consist of ...

Book Review: Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation By Renate Klein, Sheela Saravanan

Dignity: A Journal on Sexual Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Medico-Legal Collaboration Regarding The Sex Offender: Othering And Resistance, Mary Lay Schuster, Brian Larson, Amy D. Propen

Brian Larson

The Impact Of Cleft Lip And Palate Repair Surgery On Cognitive And Academic Outcomes For Teens In India, Jeremiah R. Maller

Creative Activity and Research Day - CARD

India has a backlog of an estimated 1,000,000 patients in need of cleft lip and palate repair. Unrepaired clefts result in social stigma and diminished psychological well-being, physical health and academic functioning. Cleft repair surgery has the potential to restore functioning in these domains. However, the magnitude of the social, educational, and economic impact of cleft repair surgery has not been evaluated using statistically rigorous methods. An estimation of the psychosocial and educational impact of cleft repair has implications for the appropriate allocation of public health resources. We use data gathered from teenagers in India. A difference-in-differences method ...

The Impact Of Being Born With Cleft And Cleft Reparative Surgery On Overall Health And Speech Outcomes, Khatansuudal Kira Evsanaa, Sam Manning, Jeriemiah Maller

Creative Activity and Research Day - CARD

Orofacial cleft is one of the most common and treatable birth defects in the world. If left untreated, orofacial cleft can impair normal speech development, and could lead to a number of health consequences later in life. The main motivation of the study is to measure the impact of being born with cleft and the cleft reparative surgery on overall speech and health for teenagers in India using difference-in-differences approach along with household fixed effects method. Overall health outcome was measured using height, weight, grip strength and BMI, and the speech outcome was measured using “Universal Parameters of Speech Evaluation ...

Patients Are Our Teachers, Robert E. Becker, Mary V. Seeman

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

In the patient-physician encounter, physicians hone their skills while alleviating the patient’s suffering. Both benefit. Leaning on the work of Hippocrates, Darwin, and William Osler, the authors sketch out the case for honoring patients as indispensable teachers of the art and science of medicine. They argue that this tradition of Hippocratic medicine both anticipates modern precision medicine and reawakens a focus on public health medicine, each a benefit to the patients and communities served by physicians. A community that compromises the learning relationship of physician to patient and population undermines quality of care.

Allopathic Medicine’S Influence On Indigenous Peoples In The Kumaon Region Of India, Eliana M. Blum

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

This paper focuses on the use of western medicine in the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand, India. The goal of this research is to understand which healing practices are preferable in rural villages. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 53 participants, including two spiritual healers, two doctors, and one pharmacist. Results indicate that allopathic medicine, otherwise known as modern medicine or western medicine, has become the go-to remedy for even the most remote people in India. Nearly all participants use allopathic medicine, but less than half of the participants experiment with other forms of healing, such as Ayurveda, homeopathy, meditation, and yoga ...

The Predictors Of Juvenile Recidivism: Testimonies Of Adult Students 18 Years And Older Exiting From Alternative Education, La Toshia Palmer

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this descriptive, qualitative study was to identify and describe the importance of the predictors of juvenile recidivism and the effectiveness of efforts to prevent/avoid juvenile recidivism as perceived by previously detained, arrested, convicted, and/or incarcerated adult students 18 years of age and older exiting from alternative education in Northern California. A second purpose was to explore the types of support provided by alternative schools and the perceived importance of the support to avoid recidivism according to adult students 18 years of age and older exiting from alternative education.

Methodology: This qualitative, descriptive research design ...