Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Older Women’S Stories Of Covid-19 Loss: Communicated Narrative Sense-Making Through Photography, Anne Walker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The diverse array of challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic make it difficult to assess the full impact of this global health crisis. More than 300,000 older Americans died, leaving a nation of grieving survivors in their absence. This profound loss of life will undoubtedly inform the field’s understanding of grief and grieving for many years to come. Pre-pandemic, older women in the United States understood grief to be part of their life stage; COVID-19 amplified the grief experience through both cumulative losses and the isolation particular to the novel coronavirus response. However, few qualitative studies explore older women’s grief, …

The Colored Pill: A History Film Performance Exposing Race Based Medicines, Wanda Lakota

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Of the 32 pharmaceuticals approved by the FDA in 2005, one medicine stood out. That medicine, BiDil®, was a heart failure medication that set a precedent for being the first approved race based drug for African Americans. Though BiDil®, was the first race specific medicine, racialized bodies have been used all throughout history to advance medical knowledge. The framework for race, history, and racialized drugs was so multi-tiered; it could not be conceptualized from a single perspective. For this reason, this study examines racialized medicine through performance, history, and discourse analysis.

The focus of this work aimed …

Social Aspects Of Food-Sensitive Adults, Jean Elizabeth Duane

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

People living with food-related illnesses find themselves subjugated by commonly held ideologies causing awkwardness in social situations. The current study is a qualitative analysis addressing how people with celiac disease (CD) navigate social situations in light of dominant beliefs that influence behaviors. Initially, I identify macro-level patriarchal, religious, sexist, ableist and etiquette-related commensality ideologies that disadvantage those with CD. Drawing from the communication narrative sense making (CNSM) theory that supports storytelling and memorable messages as a sense-making tool for individuals diagnosed with chronic illness and their family members, this work highlights retrospective stories and memorable messages from 20 randomly selected …

Social Support And Affectionate Communication In Animal-Assisted Interventions: Toward A Typology And Rating Scheme Of Handler/Dog Messages, Amy Mccullough

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Animal-assisted interventions (AAIs) are a treatment modality that incorporates a trained animal into a person's healing and learning process in order to benefit the person physically, emotionally and/or socially (Delta Society, 1996). From an interactional perspective, two mechanisms that may contribute to these health benefits are social support and affection exchange. Although there is growing evidence of the health and well-being benefits of AAIs, there remains a need for scientific research to understand more precisely the communicative and behavioral components that constitute a therapeutic intervention involving an animal (Kazdin, 2010). Additionally, there is a need to develop a means of …

Our Health Matters: Promoting The Health Of Sexual Minority Women In The New Media Landscape, Brenda Kane

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The shifts occurring in the mediascape and the field of public health offer new opportunities for promoting the health and wellness of sexual minority women. As a population that has historically been underserved by the healthcare system, sexual minority women face multiple barriers to achieving positive health outcomes. They are often less likely to access preventive healthcare services and more likely to engage in risky behaviors that are detrimental to health than heterosexual women. Despite the significant health disparities among sexual minority women, studying this population has not been a priority in health research and there is little research-based evidence …