Digital Commons Network^™

The Fuzzin' Facts, Rebel Alliance, Mitch Ohnstad, Rebekka Erks, Erin Prohaska, Ryan Mueksch, Rachel Foehlinger, Laura Bergen, Sean Davis

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Student Advertising Projects

The challenge for this campaign is to expose the facts about sexual health and safe sex practices in a light-hearted manner in order to make it a more comfortable topic to talk about so that more people understand the need to get the facts, get tested and get involved to help prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in Nebraska.

Forensic Palynological Analysis Of Intestinal Contents Of A Korean Mummy, Paulette Arguelles, Karl Reinhard, Dong Hoon Shin

Karl Reinhard Publications

Experimental studies show that pollen resides in the intestinal tract for a minimum of seven days to at least 21 days. Because of this long residence time, pollen analysis is an important avenue of forensic research. Pollen provides evidence of the environment of the decedent as well as foods and medicine. We analyzed a coprolite recovered from a Korean mummy. The decedent was a high-ranking general who lived during the 16th or 17th centuries. Twenty pollen types were recovered. These ranged from 100s to 10,000s of pollen grains per gram of coprolite. Importantly, comparison of the coprolite pollen spectrum to …

Law’S Power To Safeguard Global Health: A Lancet–O’Neill Institute, Georgetown University Commission On Global Health And The Law, Lawrence O. Gostin, John T. Monahan, Mary C. Debartolo, Richard Horton

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The law-–global, national, and subnational–-plays a vital, yet often underappreciated, role in safeguarding and promoting the public’s health. In this article, we launch the Lancet-O’Neill Institute, Georgetown University Commission on Global Health and the Law. Commissioners from around the world will explore the critical opportunities and challenges of using law as a tool, while evaluating the evidence base for legal interventions. The Commission aims to define and systematically describe the current landscape of law that affects global health and safety.

Commissioners were chosen from disciplines that range from health, policy, and law to economics and governance. The Commission aims …

An O'Neill Institute Briefing Paper: Ebola, The World Health Organization, And Beyond: Toward A Framework For Global Health Security, Lawrence O. Gostin, Eric A. Friedman, Daniel Hougendobler

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The West African Ebola epidemic has demonstrated that the world remains ill-prepared to respond to infectious disease outbreaks. A host of institutions are now reviewing what went wrong, and new institutions are being considered, including an African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Bank-initiated Pandemic Emergency Facility. The World Health Organization itself failed in one of its core functions by allowing a preventable infectious disease to spiral out of control in the world’s poorest region. The 68th World Health Assembly (WHA), held in May 2015, provided an opportunity for the Organization to reflect on what went wrong and …

The Normative Authority Of The World Health Organization, Lawrence O. Gostin, Devi Sridhar, Daniel Hougendobler

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The World Health Organization (WHO) was born after the devastation of World War II, as a normative agency endowed with unprecedented constitutional powers. But even as it has achieved stunning successes, such as the eradication of smallpox, it has failed to live up to the exalted expectations of the postwar health and human rights movement e exemplified most recently by its inadequate response to the Ebola epidemic. Our aim is to offer innovative ideas for restoring the Organization to its leadership position by exercising its normative authority, even as it faces a crowded and often chaotic global health architecture. Before …

Relationship Between Modality And The Degree Of Knowledge Retention In Bioterrorism Training, Gaylon Rashun Crawford

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A public health workforce must be trained to react quickly, especially in the case of terrorist attack. Political leaders and emergency management experts have often cited inadequate emergency training as a contributing factor in the public health system's failed preparations for a bioterrorist event. As a result of these failures, billions of dollars have been allocated towards correcting infrastructure deficiencies including training for public health nurses (PHNs), who are critical to a communitywide medical response. This quantitative study used Pearson's correlation and a multivariate regression analysis to evaluate the most effective modality of bioterrorism training (BTT) for PHNs working in …

Associative Factors Of Acculturative Stress In Latino Immigrants, Sam Kedem

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

For the past 200 years, Latinos have comprised the largest, consistent category of immigrants in the United States. This influx has created a need for culturally competent psychological treatment of a population that suffers from acculturative stress, defined as the stress a minority member experiences while trying to adjust to the culture of the majority. Researchers have studied Latino immigrants' enduring trials as they adjust to life in the United States. Nevertheless, there is limited research on the quantification of factors contributing to acculturative stress. Based on the conceptual framework of bidimensional acculturation and Latina/o critical race theory, predictors of …

Attitudes And Behaviors Of South African Women And Psychosocial Determinants Of Gonorrhea, Takiyah White Ndwanya

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The incidence of gonorrhea had declined since the HIV epidemic in the late 1980s, but is now increasing globally due to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant forms of this disease. In South Africa, the incidence of gonorrhea is highest among Black women due to their high co-infection rates with HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). This study examined the psychosocial determinants of gonorrhea among Black women aged 18 - 35 in the Langa township in Cape Town, South Africa. All participants had reported at least one sexual experience and at least one positive test for gonorrhea in the past two …

3 Critical Challenges For Global Health Security, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

International institutions are poised to make one of the most momentous decisions about the future of global health security since the formation of the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1948.

By the end of this year, 5 global commissions will have published major critiques of global health preparedness, all spurred by the Ebola epidemic, which exposed deep flaws in the international system.

Response To David S. Lindsay Regarding “Self-Archiving Of Publications From The Journal Of Parasitology”, Sue Ann Gardner

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

Response to ASP President, David S. Lindsay, regarding his editorial in volume 36, numbers 3-4, of the ASP Newsletter, titled “Self-archiving of publications from the Journal of Parasitology.” Concludes that the Society's contract with Allen Press will expire at some point and, in the interim, there is an opportunity renegotiate with them thoughtfully, or to look for a better outlet for the time-honored Journal of Parasitology. There are many publishing ventures arising from universities themselves, in libraries and academic departments, on viable and stable electronic platforms, that require very little overhead to administer. If even a fraction …

Alcohol Use Disorder And The Sibling Relationship: A Phenomenological Enquiry, Christine Rhodes

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Previous researchers have indicated that alcohol use disorder affects relationships between family members. Exposure to parental alcohol use disorder disrupts important relationship skill-building development between the children of the family, and may impact conflict resolution in later life relationships. The sibling relationship provides a learning opportunity on how to manage conflict, yet little is known about the effects of parental alcohol use disorder on the sibling-to-sibling relationship from the perspective of adult siblings. The purpose of this descriptive phenomenological enquiry was to explore the lived experiences of adult siblings who experienced parental alcohol use disorder in their family of origin. …

Providers' Knowledge Of The U.S. Health Care System And Their Medical Practice Choices: A Study Of Physicians, Residents, And Non-Physician Practitioners, Cora Case

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The expansion of health insurance through health care reform has reduced the number of uninsured. but access to providers has not been addressed. Understanding the relationship between practice choices and aptitude of health policy and delivery is essential to determine other factors or motivators that contribute to the development of health care access policies. This descriptive study explored the value-laden elements of health care reform, such as social constructions, to learn whether there are implicit ways to address the issue of access to health care in the United States. Schneider and Ingrams's conceptualization of policy making through social construction was …

The Lived Experiences Of Limited English Proficiency, Spanish-Speaking Male Ex-Offenders, Paula Nery Sanchez

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of Spanish-speaking men in the United States with limited English proficiency following their release from prison. The study specifically examined the experiences of these men in their efforts to access health care treatment, housing, education, and employment in Central Pennsylvania. An empirical, phenomenological research design was employed that used self-stigma, critical race, and self-determination theories for in-depth interviews with 8 men who spent 5 to 24 years in prison. A tiered coding method was used to generate 6 interconnected themes that tell the story of these men's lives: …

A Comparative Study Of Compliance Among Patients Attending An Opiate Outpatient Treatment Center In Rural Appalachia, Jerry Russell Morris

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Adults with an opiate addiction have a higher rate of noncompliance with treatment, which limits its effectiveness and increases the burden of care for society. Effective treatment decreases emergency room visits, and overdoses. The tristate area of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio has experienced increased opiate-related arrests and deaths. This study sought to measure the extent to which treatment type (medical treatment (MS) or faith-based component of service (FBS)) predicts compliance when measured by number of clean urine drug screens (UDSs) and number of kept pill count, over and above dual diagnosis, college education, and income. The on-site records of …

Rural Year-Round Growing To Ameliorate A Possible Negative Effect From Climate Change, Kimberlie A. Brussa

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggested that, as the world population grows, food and water shortages will become even more serious issues (IPPC's 2014 predictions about the future effects of climate change (CC), Year-round growing (YRG) may provide a way for communities to extend growing seasons, expand local farm systems, and provide food year round. This case study included a detailed analysis of responses from representatives of all sectors of rural Mesa County, Colorado, regarding YRG and a local food and farm plan due to CC. The case was bounded by time (6 months of data collection) which …

Contextual Factors And Direct Exposure To Hiv: Influences On Youth Sexual Intention, Hadiza Ladidi Osuji

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Youth are having sexual intercourse at an early age and as such, are engaging in risky behaviors that are associated with adverse health outcomes, including HIV infection. Little research has been undertaken to examine the influence of contextual factors on youth intentions to delay sexual involvement. To address that gap, this study aimed to examine the influence of age, gender, race, immigration status, HIV knowledge, HIV-related stigma, concern about HIV, direct exposure to HIV/AIDS, peer pressure, and religious influence on youth intentions to delay sexual involvement. Delayed sexual involvement was conceptualized as youth attitudes towards abstaining from sex, their knowledge …

Varying Levels Of Morality Awareness In Corrections Officers, William L. Hanna

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Morality has been a focus in criminal justice with recent events involving officers. This quantitative study offered research in the criminal justice field regarding the moral awareness of corrections officers. The main research question investigated the relationship between the security level of the prison unit in which a corrections officer works and his or her level of morality awareness. The study surveyed corrections officers of prison units in the Ohio Department of Rehabilitations and Corrections and focused on morality awareness of corrections officers. The independent variable was the security level of the prison unit worked in. The dependent variables were …

Negotiating Diabetes: Professional Diabetes Care Work In The U.S., Melissa Marie Gesbeck

Dissertations

The rising incidence of diabetes mellitus (types 1 and 2) transcends national borders, creating a global pandemic. The U.S. leads the world in diabetes prevalence, despite its wealth and access to sophisticated medical technologies. Within health care, there is an increasing focus on lifestyle and behavioral interventions that research suggests may be the key to reversing this trend, but thus far their effectiveness in practice is uneven at best. In order to gain a better understanding of the other factors involved in professional diabetes care work that might support or inhibit effective diabetes management, this research treats diabetes as a …

Understanding The Impact Os Stress, Irrational Health Beliefs, And Health Behaviors Among Adults18-45, Toni Loe Rabalais

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This study examined the role of stress on irrational health beliefs and health behaviors among individuals 18-45 years old. Previous research has shown that this age group reported higher stress levels, more physical symptoms of stress, and the highest level of negative health behaviors. The theoretical frameworks were health belief model, the transactional model of stress and coping theory, and Ellis's concept of irrational beliefs. A survey using 3 published instruments measured the perceived stress level, irrational health beliefs, and health behaviors of a sample of 97 individuals aged 18-45. The data were quantitatively assessed using a mediation model to …

An Analysis Of Socioeconomic Influences On Health Care Seeking Behavior In Humla, Nepal, Hannah Kuehl

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Mobile medical camps (MMCs) are common in Nepal, as well as other parts of the world. MMCs in Nepal provide health care resources that are not available through the government health system, due to Nepal’s weak health infrastructure. Although MMCs are problematic for a variety of reasons, they continue to play a role in health care delivery in remote settings the world over. Despite the fact that MMCs are increasingly common in many countries around the world, their patient populations and their health outcomes are poorly understood. This thesis is an analysis of socioeconomic influences within a select group of …

Metal And Prestige In The Greater Lower Columbia River Region, Northwestern North America, H. Kory Cooper, Kenneth Ames, Loren G. Davis

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Excavations at the late prehistoric-early historic Chinookan sites of Meier and Cathlapotle in the Greater Lower Columbia Region recovered several hundred metal artifacts. Portable X-ray fluorescence (XRF) was used initially to quickly determine metal type. Then a sample of copper artifacts was subjected to another round of XRF analysis to identify the presence of native copper and, or, chronologically sensitive copper metals. No native copper artifacts were identified and the lack of Muntz metal, a specific type of brass patented in the 1830s, corroborates the dating of material from both sites as no later than the early historic period. Meier …

Semiparametric Analysis In Conditionally Independent Multivariate Mixture Models, T. Wrobel, Denis H. Y. Leung, J. Qin, T. Hettmansperger

Research Collection School Of Economics

The conditional independence assumption is commonly used in multivariate mixture models in behavioral research. We propose an exponential tilt model to analyze data from a multivariate mixture distribution with conditionally independent components. In this model, the log ratio of the density functions of the components is modeled as a quadratic function in the observations. There are a number of advantages in this approach. First, except for the exponential tilt assumption, the marginal distributions of the observations can be completely arbitrary. Second, unlike some previous methods, which require the multivariate data to be discrete, modeling can be performed based on the …

Investigating The Value Of Workplace-Endorsed Social Media For Improving Deskbound Employee Physical Activity Program Engagement And Reducing Sedentary Behaviour Health Risks, Darren Leigh Webb

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Sedentary (prolonged sitting) behaviour is now recognised as an independent health risk factor contributing to a number of preventable lifestyle related diseases (Katzmarzyk, Church, Craig, & Bouchard, 2009). The widespread integration of computers into the office environment has seen an increase in employee work time participating in technology facilitated desk-based tasks requiring them to remain physically inactive (Philipson & Posner, 2003). According to recent research, workplace sedentary behavioural practices have objectively been measured as accounting for 81.8% of employee time, with a further 15.3% categorised as light activity within office based populations (Parry & Straker, 2013). With a recorded national …

Essays On Battle Clusters In Internal Armed Conflicts And Insurgencies: Concept, Causes And Consequences, Chifeng Liu

Theses and Dissertations

With the purpose to re-conceptualize the intensity of internal armed conflicts, I argue that the characteristics such as location, scale and duration of “major battlefields,” i.e. the spatio-temporal clusters of combat events are important in the evaluation of impact of modern civil wars and insurgencies. I start with elaborating and constructing a new concept of conflict magnitude with battle clusters using up-to-date geo-referenced data and spatial statistic methods. In the second article, I first explain the location and duration of major battlefields. The findings indicate that an area with multiple non-state armed groups (NSAGs) is more likely to become main …

When Life Happens: Theatres Of Hiv And Complexity In South Africa, Jessica S. Ruthven

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines theatre as part of an artistic movement in South Africa to address the social, structural, and emotional repercussions of HIV, as well as a space in which knowledge about HIV/AIDS is actively created, mediated, reproduced, challenged, and presented for public consumption. Although applied theatre has a long history in the country, I focus on innovation in recent theatrical practices that have occurred as artists and members of broader civil society struggle to understand the trajectory of the country's AIDS epidemic and question the scope of popular national HIV intervention campaigns. I use emerging forms of cultural production …

Combating Hiv/Aids In Marginalized Communities: Papua And West Papua Provinces, Indonesia, Bani Cheema

Master's Theses

My study focuses on foreign aid and local initiatives for HIV/AIDS prevention in eastern Indonesia using the provinces of Papua and West Papua as a case study. The two provinces are home to indigenous tribal groups that are socioeconomically marginalized and most affected by the epidemic. My research investigates behavior change communication as a principal strategy undertaken by multiple organizations for HIV/AIDS prevention in this region. I take a qualitative approach by examining the effectiveness of this strategy in local communities and by revealing social and cultural barriers that impede success. Obstacles that negatively impact prevention efforts include structural violence, …

Identifying Professional Development Opportunities For Remote Healthcare Interpreters On A Shared Network, Suzanne M. Couture

Instructional Design Capstones Collection

Many healthcare organizations are faced with the challenge of complying with an unfunded mandate to provide language services free of charge to individuals with limited English proficiency or those who are deaf or hard of hearing. One method of increasing efficiencies and reducing disparities for these vulnerable populations is to provide access to remote audio/video interpreters on a shared network. The Health Care Interpreter Network (HCIN) is a non-profit organization based in California that comprises more than forty member hospitals and offers service in twenty languages. To support the need for on-going professional development of HCIN’s interpreters, a front-end analysis …

The Economics Of Implementing Population Health Strategies: Progress In Public Health Services & Systems Research, Glen P. Mays

Health Management and Policy Presentations

Successful strategies to scale up and spread complex community-level interventions require an understanding of the resources required for implementation, how best to distribute them among supporting institutions, and how resource consumption and distribution varies across settings. This session reviews methods and early findings from the RWJF’s Public Health Delivery and Cost Studies (DACS) Initiative, which includes 12 inter-related studies examining the causes and consequences of variation in the costs of delivering complex community-level prevention strategies across more than 300 community settings in 12 states. Findings from these studies highlight the value of studying the economics of implementation, the measurement and …

Differences In The Diversity Of Frogspecies Between Sierra Lloronaand El Valle, Panama, Kei Okabe Thurber

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Panama is home to the greatest diversity of species in all of Central America. It is home to 174 species of frogs, 35 of which are endemic to Panama. Frogs are a vital part of many ecosystems. They maintain insect populations and act as food sources for larger predators. Their job of maintaining insect populations is essential to curbing the spread of diseases. Additionally, scientists have found chemical compounds in the skin of frogs that can be used to treat pain and prevent infections. The main threat to the majority of frogs is the deadly fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), or …

Comparing Disease Prevalence In Hard Corals At Four Different Reefs Near The Island Of Narganá In The Guna Yala Comarca Of Panamá, Connor Hinton

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Coral reefs harbor much of the world’s known marine biodiversity. For a number of reasons, coral reefs are becoming increasingly threatened. Large portions of the world’s reefs have already been lost, and the number of degrading reefs is constantly on the rise. One cause for the destruction of coral reefs are coral diseases, ultimately causing coral mortality. With the death of corals, a key species is lost, endangering the entire reef ecosystem. Documenting the presence of such diseases could be useful in assessing current reef health and ameliorating the growing threat of coral diseases. In this project, 18 40m2 belt …