Digital Commons Network^™

Fundamentals Of Underwriting In The Nongroup Health Insurance Market: Access To Coverage And Options For Reform, Mark Merlis

National Health Policy Forum

Although the majority of Americans with health insurance obtain coverage through their employers, many individuals must negotiate the nongroup insurance market alone. Insurers use a process called medical underwriting to identify applicants with current or recent medical problems. Because these applicants are likely to cost the insurer more in claims than a healthier person, insurers may charge them higher premiums or restrict or deny coverage. This background paper reviews the practice of underwriting, state and federal regulation of insurers offering nongroup health coverage, and several proposed options for improving access to coverage for applicants who are in poor health.

2005 - The Tenth Annual Symposium Of Student Scholars

Symposium of Student Scholars Program Books

The full program book from the Tenth Annual Symposium of Student Scholars, held on April 8, 2005. Includes abstracts from the presentations and posters.

Reconciling Temporalities: A Substantive Explanation Of The Origins Of Difficulty In The Nurse Patient Encounter, Marilyn Theresa Macdonald Phd

Dissertations

Nurses describe patients as difficult on a regular basis. Nursing research to date has assumed the existence of this phenomenon. Most studies have listed descriptors of the difficult patient and offered interventions for nurses to use to alter patient behavior. Locating of difficulty within the individual and failure to consider the context of the nurse patient encounter is problematic. The practice of locating difficulty in the individual absolves organizations and society of responsibility to work to change factors that contribute to the construction of difficulty. The purpose of this research was to move beyond a focus on the patient as …

Exploring California's Rural Health System: From The Redwood Forests To The Baja Border, Eileen Salinsky, Jessamyn Taylor

National Health Policy Forum

This three day site visit to California explored the state’s rural health system with a particular focus on the financial health of inpatient and outpatient providers and how that affects access to care. The role of telemedicine as a tool for expanding access was explored as well as the special needs of vulnerable populations such as farmworkers. Participants learned how state and federal regulation and payment policies and state budget deficits impact the viability of rural health systems.

An Analysis Of Biometric Technology As An Enabler To Information Assurance, Darren A. Deschaine

Theses and Dissertations

The use of and dependence on, Information technology (IT) has grown tremendously in the last two decades. Still, some believe the United States is only in the infancy of this growth. This explosive growth has opened the door to capabilities that were only dreamed of in the past. As easy as it is to see how advantageous this technology is, it also is clear that with its advantages come distinct responsibilities and new problems that must be addressed. For instance, the minute one begins using information processing systems, the world of information assurance (IA) becomes far more complex. As a …

An Intelligent Aircraft Landing Support Paradigm, Steve Thatcher, Lakhmi Jain, Colin Fyfe

International Symposium on Aviation Psychology - 2005

In this paper we discuss the problems associated with a small remnant of seemingly non eradicable accidents in contemporary aircraft landings and propose three autonomous agents whose task it is to jointly monitor the aircraft and its flight crew. Two of these agents will monitor the path of the aircraft, one armed with prior knowledge of how planes tend to land at a particular airport, the other with the ability to extrapolate forward from the plane’s current position in order to identify potential dangers. The third agent will monitor the flight crew’s behavior for potentially dangerous actions or inactions. These …

The Global Distribution Of Disease And Death, Jeffrey Colman Salloway

The University Dialogue

No abstract provided.

The Geo-Spatial Analysis And Environmental Factors Of Narcotics Hot Spots, Stefanie Wrae Balchak

Theses Digitization Project

A mixed methodological approach with two different analytic procedures and multiple data sources was used to examine narcotics hot spots. The first phase compares two methods of hot spots identification; the prediction model and the actual crimes. The second phase involves an intensive study to better understand the phenomenon of drug hot spots areas consistently shown to be repeat hot spots.

Trends In The Timing Of First Marriage Among Men And Women In The Developing World [Arabic], Barbara Mensch, Susheela Singh, John B. Casterline

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

The timing of first union merits investigation not only because of the close temporal link between marriage and the onset of childbearing, but also because the age when men and women marry has implications for the organization of family life and for gender relations within society. This paper begins by reviewing the contributions of various social science disciplines to an understanding of the timing of marriage. Using current status data from 73 countries provided by the United Nations Population Division and retrospective data from 52 Demographic and Health Surveys conducted between 1990 and 2001, we then examine recent trends in …

Molecular Characterization Of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Complex Isolates From Wild Ungulates In South-Central Spain, Christian Gortazar, Joaquín Vicente, Sofia Samper, Joseba M. Garrido, Isabel Fernandez-De-Mera, Patricia Gavín, Ramón A. Juste, Carlos Martín, Pelayo Acevedo, Manuel De La Puentea, Ursula Höflea

Michigan Bovine Tuberculosis Bibliography and Database

The role of European wild ungulates in the epidemiology of tuberculosis (TB) is still under discussion. This study describes the geographical distribution and molecular typing of 77 Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex isolates belonging either to M. bovis or to M. caprae, cultivated from hunter harvested red deer (Cervus elaphus) and European wild boar (Sus scrofa) in 24 Spanish localities, and compares them with spoligotypes detected previously in humans, livestock or wild animals, as described in the literature. The distribution of the molecular type patterns suggests that the population of M. tuberculosis complex strains isolated from Spanish …

El Niño Causes Dramatic Outbreak Of Paederus Dermatitis In East Africa, Ingeborg M.C.J. Van Schayk, Ruben O. Agwanda, John I. Githure, John C. Beier, Bart G.J. Knols

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

An outbreak of Paederus sabaeus rove beetles in Kenya during the 1997-1998 El Niño resulted in a dramatic increase of vesicular dermatitis in its capital Nairobi. The beetle, popularly called ‘Nairobi Fly’, contains a potent toxic fluid that causes epidermolysis and acute conjunctivitis. A cross-sectional epidemiological study involving 1,208 Nairobi residents was conducted to determine the health impact of this outbreak. The results showed that one-third of the Nairobi population were infected during this period. The majority of the respondents reported lesions on exposed body parts above the shoulders. Disfiguring, painful blisters and skin rashes in and around the facial …

I Connect Therefore I Am: Connectivity And Networking In Bodies, Technologies, Communities, And Selves, Anthony Lambert

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The notion of connection refers to both metaphorical and material practices informing our understandings of the flows of energy and information within human bodies, communities, geographies, and technological networks. Cranny-Francis offers a definition of connection which accounts for the term's significance in the contexts of both Cultural Studies and multimedia literacy:

It refers to the ways in which texts generate meanings through their relationship with other texts, to the development of multimedia technologies that are characterized by their connectivity (the web, the net), and to the ways in which meanings are generated crucially by the connection between texts …

Help-Seeking For Depression In Rural Women: A Community Portrait, Vicky Mitchell Fisher

Theses and Dissertations

This study was conducted with fourteen participants who lived in a rural Virginia community. The focus of the study was exploration of the nature of the experience of depression and of help-seeking for depression in one rural woman and in her community social network. The need for exploration of the community social network was influenced by the DeFacto Services Model of Rural Mental Health, which emphasized the influence of community factors in making decisions to seek mental health care. Findings of the study included the following themes, which related to the nature of depression: 1) linkage of experiential depression to …

Paediatric Palliative And Supportive Care: Caring For Life: The Needs Of Children And Families In Western Australia, Leanne Monterosso, Linda Kristjanson, Marianne Phillips, Sue Rowell

Research outputs pre 2011

Palliative care is the relief of symptoms, regardless of their impact on the underlying disease process. The philosophical underpinning of current international paediatric palliative and supportive care models is that palliative and supportive care should be offered to all children with life threatening or chronic illnesses/disabilities with complex care needs. This approach allows the integration of cure-directed treatment and palliative care. allowing children to benefit from both philosophies of care. In Australia, there is increasing recognition of the need for the development of appropriate paediatric palliative care services, especially in Western Australia where supportive care services for children with life-limiting …

A Descriptive Study Of Ethical Procedures That Maintain Cultural Security When Conducting Health Research With Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander School Children In Western Australia, Dionne Paki

Theses : Honours

Cultural security is the maintenance of values and beliefs and the celebration of diversity unique to different cultures. This honours thesis developed a proposed framework to guide collaborative ethics procedures that demonstrate the Aboriginal values relevant to health research for use in Western Australia (WA). These values of reciprocity, respect, equality, responsibility, survival and protection, and spirit and integrity have been identified in the National Health and Medical Research Council's Values and Ethics: Guidelines for Ethical Conduct in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research. Ethical procedures for maintaining cultural security when conducting health research among Aboriginal people throughout Australia …

Face À La Meute – Narration Et Folie Dans Les Romans De Boubacar Boris Diop, Susanne Gehrmann

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The article analyses the narrative techniques and the theme of madness in three novels by the Senegalese writer Boubacar Boris Diop, caracterised by narrative polyphony and metatextual reflexion on the production of a story. The speech of protagonists affected by “intellectual madness” plays a strategic role in the structure of the novel which, as a hybrid genre, draws on oral and literary traditions in a still splintered aesthetic. The image of the pack represents an unreasonnable society condemning a so-called mad individual whose madness consists in bringing a counter-memory of the foundation myths.

A Bjs Statistical Profile, 1992-2002: American Indians And Crime, Steven W. Perry

United States Public Health Resources

This report represents a compilation and new analysis of data on the incidents, prevalence, and consequences of violent crime among American Indians. The report uses data from a wide variety of sources, including statistical series maintained by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), and the U.S. Census Bureau.
The findings reveal a disturbing picture of the victimization of American Indians and Alaska Natives. The rate of violent crime estimated from self reported victimizations for American Indians is well above that of other U.S. racial or ethnic groups and is …

Folk Healing In The Tradition Of The Fidencista Movement, Katherine Brittain

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The Fidencista Movement is a religion in process . Like in many other medico-religions whose primary ministry is healing, women hold the highest positions of authority. The shamanic channeling of the spirit of the folk saint, Niño Fidencio , plies Fidencistas' belief in the spirit world and ameliorates physical and emotional healing. Fidencistas are concentrated in the Texas/Mexico borderland region where they are facing a passing of traditionalism, the social matrix in which folk healing thrives. However, the signature of the Movement, the penitential trek up the Vía de Dolores in Espinazo, is a cohering bi-annual ritual that fortifies devotion …

Identification Of Common Subpopulations Of Non-Sorbitol-Fermenting, Β-Glucuronidase-Negative Escherichia Coli O157:H7 From Bovine Production Environments And Human Clinical Samples, Zhijie Yang, Joy Kovar, Jaehyoung Kim, Joseph Nietfeldt, David R. Smith, Rodney A. Moxley, Michael E. Olson, Paul D. Fey, Andrew K. Benson

School of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences: Faculty Publications

Non-sorbitol-fermenting, β-glucuronidase-negative Escherichia coli O157:H7 strains are regarded as a clone complex, and populations from different geographical locations are believed to share a recent common ancestor. Despite their relatedness, high-resolution genotyping methods can detect significant genome variation among different populations. Phylogenetic analysis of high-resolution genotyping data from these strains has shown that subpopulations from geographically unlinked continents can be divided into two primary phylogenetic lineages, termed lineage I and lineage II, and limited studies of the distribution of these lineages suggest there could be differences in their propensity to cause disease in humans or to be transmitted to humans. Because …

Access To Quality Care: Links Between Evidence, Nursing Language, And Informatics, Beth Ann Swan Phd, Crnp, Norma M. Lang Phd, Rn, Faan, Frcn, Anne M. Mcginley Phd, Crnp

College of Nursing Faculty Papers & Presentations

Despite evidence on nursing’s contribution to the quality of care, much of what nurses “do” remains essentially invisible.

It is vital to recognize the need for a paradigm shift in nursing that utilizes new informatics tools required for optimum use of evidence related to the delivery of quality nursing care.

Embedding nursing language within informatics structures is essential to make the work of nurses visible, and articulate evidence about the quality and value of nursing in the care of patients, groups, and populations.

Conducting Life History Research With Adolescents, Kristin Haglund

College of Nursing Faculty Research and Publications

This article is a commentary on the life history approach, which specifically described aspects of and offered suggestions for conducting life history research with adolescents. The life history approach is well suited to a wide variety of types of health-related inquiry. In this article, the author used an exemplar study to show how well the life history approach was suited for questions regarding adolescent issues. This approach was also a good match for the developmental skills and needs of adolescents. The author uses the strengths and weaknesses of the approach and a detailed example of how she used the life …

Evaluating Uranium Depth Versus Socio-Economic Statistics For Residential Radon Vulnerability In Warren County, Kentucky, Anthony Iovanna

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Residences in Warren County, Kentucky, are characterized by high levels of residential radon, which is one of the radioactive daughter products of uranium. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), radon exposure causes approximately 22,000 lung cancer deaths in the United States per year. The City of Bowling Green, in Warren County, is underlain by karst, an easily soluble limestone subsurface, which allows radon gas to travel easily through cracks and fissures. Carbonate rocks under Bowling Green are underlain by the Devonian Chattanooga Shale, a low-grade uranium ore and a potential source of radon gas. A digital …

Inside Unlv, Diane Russell, Carol C. Harter, Cate Weeks, Cayrn Key

Inside UNLV

No abstract provided.

Nursing Workforce Shortage And Diversity Disparity In Northwest Arkansas, Jeffery T. Collins, Yi Liu

Publications and Presentations

The purpose of this analysis is the ascertain: 1) if market conditions in Northwest Arkansas (the study area) are sufficient to support the proposed planning effort by Northwest Arkansas Nursing Education Consortium (NANEC) to create a bilingual nursing student recruitment model and 2) to determine of that model is portable to other geographies.

Com Outlook Summer 2004, College Of Osteopathic Medicine

COM Outlook

No abstract provided.

The Explorer, Summer 2004, College Of Dental Medicine

Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Schizophrenics, Cyborgs And The Pitfalls Of Posthumanism, Angela Woods

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editors' Introduction]

In Schizophrenics, Cyborgs and the Pitfalls of Posthumanism, Angela Woods invites us to revisit two canonical analyses of the postmodern: Fredric Jameson's Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism and Donna Haraway's A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s. Jameson and Haraway introduced to contemporary cultural criticism two posthumanist icons: the schizophrenic, a pathologized victim of postmodernity, and the cyborg, a vision of strategic posthuman subjectivity. In her timely and critical analysis of these articles, Woods challenges the established notion of an oppositional relationship between the schizophrenic and the cyborg. She turns …

Risk Factors For Pre-Post Monsoon Cholera Epidemics In Bangladesh From 1992-1994, Rhonda Rae Robb

Dissertations and Theses

The primary objective of this thesis is to differentiate between the risk factors for pre-and post-monsoon cholera epidemics in rural Bangladesh by analyzing the complex interaction between select environmental, cultural/behavioral, and socioeconomic variables over space and time. In rural Bangladesh, cholera epidemics correspond with the annual monsoon: the first, and smallest, occurs between March and June, while the larger cholera peak occurs between September and December. The differences between the spatial and temporal patterns of seasonal cholera are analyzed, and the risk factors are calculated for pre-and post-monsoon cholera epidemics.

The theoretical approach that underlies this medical geographical study is …

The Economics Of Quality: Changing Incentives In Cincinnati, Lisa Sprague, Nora Super

National Health Policy Forum

This site visit focused on private market dynamics and quality improvement initiatives. Cincinnati is characterized by strong players in all sectors of the market: employers such as Procter and Gamble and General Electric, hospital systems, health plans, and physician groups with the power to “push back” in contract negotiations. The city is a pilot site for Bridges to Excellence, a pay-for-performance initiative spearheaded by GE. Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center is a grantee under the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pursuing Perfection program. Among the issues explored were physician supply, incentive structures, specialty hospitals, and information technology.

International Art Therapy Program Development: An Exploratory Cultural Encounter In Ayacucho, Peru, Haley Johnstone

EVMS School of Health Professions Theses & Dissertations

Humanitarian aid organizations, both domestic and international, provide health care, mental health services, education, and community development for traumatized children worldwide living in regions affected by political violence. Sparse information exists regarding the role of an art therapist within these organizations. The profession of art therapy lacks research specific to the benefits of intervention and program development within the context of an international humanitarian aid team. This thesis reviews the ethnographic research of an art therapy graduate student who explored the opportunities for art therapy within such a team.

Cultural competency was an essential component of the researcher’s success while …