Digital Commons Network^™

Self-Collection For Cervical Cancer Screening In A Safety-Net Setting: The Prestis Randomized Clinical Trial, Jane R Montealegre, Susan G Hilsenbeck, Shaun Bulsara, Susan L Parker, Trisha L Amboree, Matthew L Anderson, Maria Daheri, Maria L Jibaja-Weiss, Kathleen M Schmeler, Ashish A Deshmukh, Elizabeth Y Chiao, Michael E Scheurer

Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy Staff Publications

Importance: There are limited data on the effectiveness of mailed self-collection to increase cervical cancer screening (CCS) participation in underresourced health care settings.

Objective: To compare the effectiveness of mailed self-collection kits, with and without patient navigation, to telephone reminders to increase CCS in a safety-net health system.

Design, setting, and participants: This pragmatic, parallel, single-blinded, randomized clinical trial within a publicly funded safety-net health system in Houston, Texas, compared (1) telephone reminder (TR) for clinic-based screening, (2) TR with mailed self-collection (SC), and (3) TR with mailed SC and patient navigation among a random sample of CCS-eligible patients not …

If You Give A Website A Cookie: Educating Children About Online Privacy, Tina Mccomiskey

University Honors Theses

Internet usage increases every year, and internet-connected apps and websites make up a large portion of this growth, so it becomes more important to understand how the information we share on the internet can impact our daily lives. From companies using personal data for targeted advertising to hackers exploiting accounts by using public information to answer security questions, poor internet practices can cause a great deal of harm. These forms of exploitation show the need for more education on internet privacy. My Privacy Awareness Learning Games (myPAL Games) was designed to address this gap in education for children …

From Prohibition To Prescription: Exploring Injustice, Bias, And Science-Based Solutions, Alexander Campos

University Honors Theses

This thesis critiques the war on drugs for disproportionately targeting minority communities and prioritizing systemic exploitation over public health. It examines the flawed, politically influenced DEA drug scheduling process, which neglects evidence of the medical benefits of substances like cannabis, psilocybin, LSD, DMT, and MDMA. This thesis gives a brief history of the evolution of US drug policy, which contributed to mass incarceration, reinforced racial disparities, and failed to reduce overdose deaths. It also highlights the potential mental health benefits of decriminalizing and regulating psychedelics to treat conditions like PTSD, depression, and substance abuse disorder. This thesis concludes by promoting …

Death To Comphet: A Chapina Southern Lesbian Story, Doraly Oneida Perez-Valdez

University Honors Theses

This paper is a counterstory that fights narratives that have been placed upon Latina Lesbians by everyone but us. The main topic is compulsory heteronormativity also known as "comphet". This autoethnography explains how "comphet" may affect different identities but specifically a Latina Lesbian from the South. There are nine chapters that explain how each topic affects a different aspect of identity but centers lesbianism. Societal reasons, cultural reasons, "date to marry" culture, Southern upbringing, sex education received, racial and gender stereotypes, and capitalism are all of the topics being explored through the lens of a Southern Latina Lesbian. These topics …

Beyond The Meadow: Exploring The Violence And Dynamics Of Power In Watership Down Through Critical Animal Studies And Cinematographic Lens, Marwa Hussein Abdelfattah

Arts and Design

This paper aims to analyze the 2018 Netflix miniseries adaptation of Richard Adams's classic novel, Watership Down, using Critical Animal Studies and a Cinematographic lens. The analysis focuses on its visual storytelling through the camera angles, lighting, and character representation. Adams’ novel was adapted three times. The first two animated versions were horrifying to the extent that one of them was banned. The most recent version used Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) technology to be more friendly. The CGI version toned down explicit brutality while maintaining the novel's darker themes. Unlike the two previous versions, the CGI focused on inferred violence and …

Refugee Student Perspectives On Educators’ Role In Fostering Resilience In U.S. Schools, Ann Marsh, Clementine Msengi, Sandra Harris

Tapestry: Journal of Research in Education

This qualitative study focused on five individuals who arrived in the United States either as refugees from conflict areas or as asylum seekers already residing in the country. The refugees were from Afghanistan, and the asylum seekers were from Iran. The researchers employed a phenomenological approach to conduct in-depth interviews with refugees, asylum seekers, and parents of such students, all of whom had experienced attending school after their arrival in the United States. The research question explored the role of teachers, instructors, and professors in fostering resilience among refugee students. Consistent with existing literature, the findings indicated that the teachers' …

Online Learning And Private Christian Hispanic Serving Institutions: A Narrative Review Of The Literature, Daniela A. Hernandez, Brandi R. Munoz, Stephanie Ferrell

Tapestry: Journal of Research in Education

This narrative literature review explores the intersection of Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), online education, and the role of private Christian universities in addressing educational disparities for Hispanic students. It synthesizes existing research on the challenges Hispanic students face in higher education, including financial barriers, limited digital access, underutilization of student support services, and institutional identity issues. Drawing on social capital theory and student engagement theory, this review highlights how HSIs, particularly private Christian institutions, can develop culturally responsive initiatives and leverage federal Title V funding to support Hispanic learners. The paper also examines emerging efforts such as the “Seal of …

Teleopathy And The First-Year Law Student: The Challenges And Unhealthy Consequences Of An Unbalanced Pursuit Of A Valid Purpose, Jerome M. Organ

The Journal of Law Teaching and Learning

No abstract provided.

M. Ed. In Teacher Leadership Portfolio, Elizabeth Hemmons

Master of Education in Teacher Leadership Portfolios

No abstract provided.

The History And Modern-Day Reality Of Racial Discrimination In Jury Selection, Marie Andelique Aviles

Florida Atlantic University Undergraduate Law Journal

The role that a prosecutor and attorneys have in the courtroom is vital in shaping the composition of a jury in any court case. Prosecutors and attorneys employ strategies during the Voir Dire process to maximize their chances of securing favorable outcomes. Upon examining how juries are selected, jury pools can be studied from historical and modernday cases that show trends of racial discrimination. The methods and decision-making process to select a jury can involve racial biases that ultimately affect the outcome of the court decision. Through case studies and legal documentation, this article will explore how implicit racial bias …

Brazil And The United States: The Historical Evolution Of Civil Vs. Common Law Systems, Gabriella Figueiredo Borges

Florida Atlantic University Undergraduate Law Journal

The legal systems of Brazil and the United States have developed from unique historical and cultural backgrounds. Brazil’s legal framework is rooted in civil law principles brought by its Portuguese colonizers, focusing on codification and legal certainty. In comparison, the U.S. system emerged from English common law, prioritizing precedent and judicial interpretation. This paper explores how colonial influences, independence movements, and constitutional reforms specifically shaped the civil and common law frameworks in both countries. By drawing on primary legal texts, historical records, and scholarly analyses, this research examines how these events influenced the evolution of each system. Additionally, this paper …

Beyond The White Coat: The Fight For Equal Healthcare By Minorities, Morgan Robinson

Florida Atlantic University Undergraduate Law Journal

Systematic oppression through medical discrimination has left a high rate of death in the minority community, with Black women having 2.6 times the rate of maternal mortality than White women. Medical professionals ignore minorities at a higher rate than White people. People of Color have been used as testers for medical professionals and reap the generational trauma of it, such as subjects of the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment passing it to their children. Even more, doctors today are taught that Black people have a “higher pain tolerance than other races,” so their symptoms are often dismissed. Legal solutions must be implemented …

2025-06-05 Minutes & Appendices, Longwood University

Board of Visitors Meeting Minutes 1964-

No abstract provided.

University Counseling Center Therapists' Perspectives Of Counseling About Nutrition, Ana Lucia Pacheco

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined university counseling center therapists' perspectives on discussing nutrition in therapy. Despite the established link between nutrition and mental health, minimal research has explored how therapists approach these discussions. This study used interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to analyze semi-structured interviews with 10 university counseling center therapists from the Mountain West region. Four overarching themes emerged: a deficit view of nutrition, perceived utility, ethical practice, and holistic care. Therapists unanimously recognized the connection between nutrition and mental health and primarily discussed nutrition with clients presenting with eating disorders or disordered eating, those who express interest, or as part of …

A Framework For Scalable And Controlled Hallucination Data Collection, Lin Ting Liang

Computer Science Senior Theses

This thesis addresses a key bottleneck in hallucination research: the scarcity and limitations of hallucination benchmark datasets. Existing datasets typically focus on a single type of hallucination and are expensive to produce due to the need for manual prompt creation and annotation. To overcome these challenges, we propose a novel mixture-of-experts (MoE) adversarial framework that actively induces hallucinations. Our framework employs three large language model (LLM) agents that iteratively and adversarially revise prompts to provoke hallucinated responses from a target question-answering model. It automates the generation of both intrinsic hallucinations (logical inconsistencies) and extrinsic hallucinations (inclusion of unverifiable external information). …

Development Of Recommendations For The Future Of Telehealth Use Among Sexual And Gender Minorities (Sgm), Jeffrey A. Wilhite

Dissertations and Theses

It is now well-documented that sexual and gender minoritized individuals (SGMs) face consistent stigmatization from not just the health care system, but also from overarching community, federal, and societal entities. Subsections of the SGM community, like gay men for example, face higher rates of eating disorders, certain cancers, alcoholism, mental illness and even obesity, when compared to heterosexual counterparts. Many of these challenges could be exacerbated by current political administration efforts to silence the community. Ensuring access to clinical care is one way of preserving the health and livelihood of the community. Telehealth, or synchronous, remote based clinical care, can …

Prevalence And Predictors Of Intimate Partner Violence Against Men In Kisumu Slums, Kenya, Elizabeth Akello Odemba, Edward A. Frongillo Jr. Ph.D., Sheri D. Weiser

Faculty Publications

Background

Men in sub-Saharan Africa experience intimate partner violence, with few reporting their cases to the legal authorities or coming out for assistance. Consequently, data on the prevalence and drivers of intimate partner violence in different parts of sub-Saharan Africa are inadequate. Therefore, this study was designed to investigate the prevalence and predictors of intimate partner violence against men in Kisumu slums, Kenya.

Methods

This retrospective cross-sectional study included 398 randomly selected men in intimate relationships aged 18–54 years and residing in Kisumu slums. The sampling frame used was from Community Health Volunteers covering the area of study. Data collection …

A Mixed-Methods Study On Extended Parental Separation Among Mexican And Central American Immigrants: Insights From Legal Violence And The Stress Process, Natalie J. Cholula

Dissertations and Theses

My mixed-methods dissertation examines the mental health effects of legal violence on Mexican and Central American immigrants experiencing prolonged parental separation amid heightened immigration enforcement. The study encompasses three papers utilizing Menjívar and Abrego's (2012) framework of legal violence and Pearlin's (1989) stress process model. The first paper employs quantitative analysis of the Mesoamerican Migration Project data, revealing that heightened immigration enforcement is associated with increased distress among Mexican immigrants in the context of parental separation, the use of coyotes, and the Trump era. The second paper offers qualitative insights from 29 Mexican and Central American immigrants, highlighting the emotional …

Ud History: The Central Women’S Organization, Ava Merriman

University Libraries Blog Archive

Ava Merriman ’25 traces the trajectory of women enrolled on campus and how the coeducational environment took shape.

Medicare Advantage Dominance In Puerto Rico’S Healthcare System: Exploring Its Financial Landscape, Marketing Strategies And Quality Measures Using The Commercial Determinants Of Health Framework, Sergio Andrés Rivera-Rodríguez

Dissertations and Theses

Over time, Medicare Advantage (MA) has seen an increase in enrollment in the United States and Puerto Rico. This program, which is the privatized version of traditional Medicare, has faced critiques in recent years for being focused on profit maximization and reducing accessibility to Medicare beneficiaries. In Puerto Rico, the majority of Medicare beneficiaries (95%) choose a MA plan over traditional Medicare. Despite being the primary financier of healthcare in Puerto Rico and covering populations that require extensive healthcare services, individuals over 65 and those with disabilities, there are still numerous research gaps about the MA industry. This dissertation examines …

Improving Follow-Up Adherence: A Case Study On Patient Experience Initiatives, Aaron Haley

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Patient-centered care has become increasingly paramount in healthcare organizations (Thummak et al., 2023). A critical component of this model is patient adherence to scheduled appointments, as missed visits can negatively affect outcomes (Halladay et al., 2019), increase healthcare costs, waste resources, and disrupt workflow (Low et al., 2023). This qualitative case study investigated the factors contributing to patient nonadherence to scheduled visits in a multidisciplinary behavioral health organization (BHO) in the Southwestern United States. The study utilized data from the behavioral health leader (BHL), organizational records, and secondary sources and was guided by the Baldrige Framework of Excellence as its …

The Ecology Of Gender-Based Violence For Syrian Refugee Women In Tripoli And Akkar, Dima Masoud

Dissertations and Theses

Lebanon is a country that suffers from multiple economic, political, and health crises. Additionally, the mass displacement of Syrian refugees to Lebanon after the war in Syria over a decade ago has left Syrian refugees vulnerable, including the vulnerability of Syrian refugee women to gender-based violence (GBV). While these conditions have affected all of Lebanon, this dissertation focuses on the regions of Tripoli and Akkar in northern Lebanon. Tripoli and Akkar are regions that border Syria, which means that an influx of Syrian refugees, mostly unregistered, comes in. While other regions in Lebanon also border Syria, Tripoli and Akkar are …

Violent Tenderness, Aimilia Amalia Matthildi Tsopela

Comparative Literature Undergraduate Senior Theses

This thesis concerns itself with a single question: “What is love?” Specifically, it constitutes an account of love as a failed failure. The first chapter proposes a conceptualization of love as a subject-to-subject relation, through sustained engagement with the work of Alain Badiou. Specifically, the nature of the love relation as an intersubjective construction is articulated through a critique and reworking of Badiou’s conceptualization of love as an evental phenomenon. The second chapter explores the failed failure of love in relation to language, wherein the lovers’ discourse is understood to be linguistic play, operating according to the principles of Bataillean …

A Pre–Post Study Evaluating An Online Cbt-Based Intervention To Improve Academic Performance In Students With Low Mood, Suheir Awadalla, E. Bethan Davies, Cris Glazebrook

All Works

Online cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT)-based interventions have shown the potential to improve the mental health of university students. However, their impact on West Asian cultures and educational achievement has yet to be fully investigated. This study explores the feasibility, acceptability, and potential effectiveness of a self-directed, internet-delivered, cognitive–behavioural skills training programme (MoodGYM) in reducing depression and improving academic performance among university students in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This exploratory pre- and postintervention study with a historical control group recruited 50 students, having a GPA <2 and self-reporting at least one of two key depressive symptoms, from one UAE university. The results demonstrated that the total Hospital Depression and Anxiety Scale (HADS) depression score (HADS-D) decreased after the intervention (P = 0.004), and the proportion of participants scoring above the cutoff for depression (HADS-D ≥8) decreased from 77.2 to 27.3% (p < 0.001). There was also a significant reduction in HADS-anxiety scores (p < 0.001), and the proportion of participants above the cut-off for anxiety (HADS-A ≥8) decreased from 50% to 11.4% (p = 0.001). GPA improved significantly over time (p < 0.001, d = 1.3), and attendance warnings decreased (p = 0.008, d = 0.6). Most students (79.6%) evaluated MoodGYM as useful, and all students completed at least two MoodGYM modules. This study shows that MoodGYM, a web-based mental health promotion intervention, improves academic achievement in university students with depressive symptoms. Further research is needed to explore how MoodGYM can be best implemented within university settings.

Spectator 2025-06-05, Editors Of The Spectator

The Spectator

No abstract provided.

Eliminating Assay Background Of A Low-Cost, Colorimetric Glutamine Biosensor By Engineering An Alternative Formulation Of Cell-Free Protein Synthesis, Joseph P. Talley, Tyler J. Free, Tyler P. Green, Dallin M. Chipman, Bradley Charles Bundy

Faculty Publications

Glutamine is an essential biomolecule that plays a pivotal role in many diseases, such as cancer, where it can serve as fuel for rapid proliferation. Treatments for these diseases can be monitored and optimized through the detection of glutamine, though standard glutamine detection procedures are costly and require complex instrumentation. Cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) has recently enabled a paper-based, colorimetric glutamine sensor that carries the potential to increase test accessibility while dramatically reducing consumer cost to enable at-home, rapid treatment monitoring. Test sensitivity remained limited by residual assay background, thus motivating this work where CFPS reactions traditionally formulated with glutamate …

(M)Other Tongue Aspirations: Negotiating Banjara Language, Identity, And Education Policy In Rural India, Jessica Chandras, Devayani Tirthali, Sameer Honwad

UNF Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

California Prison Reentry Service Providers’ Views On Rehabilitation And Its Impact On Recidivism, Kimberly A. Clisbee

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This qualitative review used a convergent-parallel design to explore the perspectives of prison administrators and nonprofit reentry program providers regarding inmate rehabilitation iii and reentry services. In 2021, 76,000 inmates were pardoned due to changes in California legislation (Fritz, 2024, p. 1 ). According to a 2024 report, 89,898 inmates are residing in California State prisons- 119% over capacity (Morris, 2024, p. 1 ). This study investigated two key aspects: (1) What rehabilitation and reintegration services are offered to inmates in the California State prison system, and are these services provided upon release? 2. Are inmates required to participate in …

Behavioral Skills Training: Comparing Parent Implementation To Registered Behavior Technician Implementation, Jessica Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

Behavioral Skills Training (BST) is an evidence-based practice appropriate for practitioners, parents, clients, and other populations. It is frequently used in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy to support and augment skill development. Parent training in ABA has been found to be beneficial, and often critical, in the progress of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). While BST is a popular method of parent training, it is unclear how effective this type of training is in comparison to the training given to a Registered Behavior Technician (RBT). This study took place in conjunction with an ABA clinic providing in home therapy. …

The Influence Of Father Involvement On Early Childhood Outcome In China, Shuiyan Guo

Theses and Dissertations

Using a sample from China, this study examined the influence of father involvement on child outcome in early childhood in areas of internalizing problems, externalizing problems and prosocial behaviors. The participants were drawn from the larger PACIFIC project, a cross-cultural study of family processes in Asia. 479 families with a preschool or kindergarten child living in Beijing and Dalian, China were included in this study. Using multiple regression analysis, result indicated that father involvement was not significantly associated with child’s internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and prosocial behaviors. Moderation analysis was also conducted and found that the effect of father involvement …