Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Assessing Current Telehealth Mobile Applications In The United States: Accessibility, Privacy, And Care Delivery, Rosemary K. Frugé

Honors Theses

Telehealth has improved patient access by reducing barriers to convenient, cost-effective, and quality health care. Telehealth mobile applications allow individuals to remotely access services through smartphone-based platforms. The purpose of this study was to evaluate leading telehealth applications available in the United States, analyzing key factors that influence platform selection, including cost, prescribing and diagnostic capabilities, user feedback, and data privacy practices. Applications were identified through keyword-based searches of major app stores using the term “telehealth,” and each app was systematically evaluated using predefined criteria. Findings highlight variability across platforms in pricing transparency, service offerings, and privacy disclosures, despite generally …

Una To Award 1st Doctorate Of Nursing Practice, Bernie Delinski

Documents

A cohort of four graduates become the first students awarded a Doctor of Nursing Practice from the University of North Alabama.

Six Departments Move Into New Building, Una Alumni Association

Documents

Alumni News article discussing the early stages of Stevens Hall, then known as the Education and Nursing Building, and its impact on the School of Nursing, School of Education, and Departments of Social Work, Sociology, Foreign Languages, and Political Science.

Program's Namesake 'Born' To Be A Nurse, Bernie Delinski

Documents

Article celebrating the naming of the Florence Helen Nethery Duncan Bachelor of Science in Nursing in honor of its namesake's gift and the 50th year anniversary of the degree.

New Building Houses Education And Nursing, University Of North Alabama

Documents

Article from the 1979 Resume of UNA discussing the Education and Nursing Building, now known as Stephens Hall, as well as the accreditation of the Schools of Nursing and Education.

Student Nurse Receives Honors At North Alabama, The Timesdaily

Documents

Pamela Thompson Suggs graduating senior at the University of North Alabama was chosen for the honor of leading the Nightingale pledge and was the recipient of the Outstanding Senior Nursing Student Award.

State Nursing: Una Earns #3 Ranking, Courier Journal

Documents

In 2024, the nursing program at the University of North Alabama was ranked third in the state after Auburn and the University of Alabama by the research of RegisteredNursing.org..

Student Loan Fund Boosted, Florence State University

Documents

Retired nurse, Mrs. Anne Callahan donates funds to the Florence State University (FSU) nursing program that will be matched by the federal government making educational funding available to nursing students.

Career Day Planning: Alumni Agree To 'Come Home', Teresa Leonard

Documents

The article describes the return of various alumni to discuss their careers with students at the University of North Alabama, among them is Charlotte Tomlinson Homan, an alumna of School of Nursing and employee of the critical care unit at the Colonial Manor Hospital.

New To Una Faculty, The Flor-Ala

Documents

The image is derived from The Flor-Ala and depicts new faculty members for the 1977 academic year. Several new instructors in the nursing department are featured, including Mrs. Charlotte Jamieson, Ms. Patricia Auxier, Mrs. Debra Pratt, Ms. Lavin Reed, and Mrs. Jayne Gillespie.

Kelley's Korner: Fsu Nursing Program Will Get Thorough Study, Pete Kelley

Documents

The article analyzes the plausibility of the development of the Florence State University nursing program.

Baldwin Advocates Ladder Program Here, Donna Bryant

Documents

Dr. Sue Baldwin, University of North Alabama Nursing Instructor, advocates for the development of a "career ladder" program at UNA for registered nurses that graduated from hospital programs rather than simply retaining the baccalaureate degree as the only avenue for career advancement.

Nursing Enrollment Has Nearly Doubled, Bernie Delinski, Dan Busey

Documents

The article discusses the increase in enrollment in the College of Nursing after the construction of Laura M. Harrison Hall, as well as the program's expansion to include respiratory therapy and nurse practitioner programs.

Rausch Attends Health Congress, Lorene Frederick

Documents

Dr. Judith Rausch, UNA community nursing instructor, delivered her research on the prevalence of cigarette use among nurses at the International Congress on Health Education in London.

New Graduate Nurse Retention Strategies Toolkit For Managers And Leadership, Taryn Ryan

Student Scholarly Projects

Practice Problem:

Nurse retention has been a persistent issue for over a decade, with increasing turnover among new graduate nurses. Many new nurses leave the profession due to inadequate preparation for clinical roles and responsibilities.

PICOT:

The PICOT question that guided this project was: For nurse managers and leaders supporting new graduate nurses (P), how does the development of a best-practice retention toolkit (I), compared to existing retention practices (C), guide evidence-based strategies to improve nurse retention (O)?

Evidence:

Evidence indicates that new graduate nurses often feel insufficiently prepared for patient care responsibilities, compromising patient safety (Haddad et al., 2023; …

Adoptive Cell Therapies For Glioblastoma: A Quest For Cures From Within, Jia-Shiun Leu, Xin Ge, Charles Robin Yu, Guang Peng, Jiyong Liang

The Brown Foundation: Institute of Molecular Medicine

Glioblastomas (GBMs) are the most aggressive form of brain cancer recalcitrant to both current standard-of-care and immune checkpoint therapies that benefit other cancer patients. Adoptive cell therapies (ACT) using patients' own immune cells have long been explored as a treatment strategy, including the historically studied lymphokine-activated killer (LAK) cells, the evolving chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) directed immune cells, the newly emerging tumor-infiltrating T lymphocyte (TIL) therapies, and others. Preclinical and clinical studies have shown promise but also highlighted significant challenges. In this review, we summarize these findings, highlight recent developments, discuss current limitations, and emphasize how ACT may benefit from …

Health Data And Policy Related To Methamphetamine-Use Suicide In Mississippi, Mary C. Drane

Honors Theses

The purpose of this research is to investigate how methamphetamine use in Mississippi, especially in its rural areas, intersects with public health, policy, and suicide outcomes in the state. Mississippi's methamphetamine crisis has evolved significantly, shifting from locally produced drugs to cartel-supplied crystal methamphetamine, while state and federal policies have struggled to keep pace with the scale and complexity of the problem. Using a convergent parallel mixed-methods design, this research analyzed CDC Wonder multiple causes of death data and SAMHSA Treatment Episode Data Set Admissions (TEDS-A) data from 2018 to 2024 alongside four qualitative key informant interviews with stakeholders across …

Prognostic Significance And Interplay Of Circulatory Pcsk-9–Apociii–Chemokine Axis In Type 2 Diabetes And Its Complications: A Pilot Study In North Indian Patients, Mohd Waiz, Sahir S. Alvi, Parvej Ahmad, Bodor Bin Sheeha, Paridhi Puri, Irfan Ahmad, Saheem Ahmad, M. Salman Khan

School of Medicine Publications

Background: Proprotein convertase subtilisin kexin/type-9 (PCSK-9) regulates cholesterol homeostasis through lysosomal degradation of LDL-R and also acts as a pleiotropic mediator of inflammation. Emerging evidence links PCSK-9 to diabetes pathogenesis. Given the genetic diversity and distinct lifestyle of the Indian population, investigating role of PCSK-9 in Indian type-2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients is crucial. Notably, its association with ApoCIII and chemokines such as CXCL2 and MCP-1 remains unexplored.

Results: A total of 187 participants were included: Heathy control (HC; n = 50), T2DM (n = 49), T2DM with nephropathy (T2DM-N; n = 43), and T2DM with dyslipidaemia (T2DM-DL; n = …

Ethical Decision-Making Frameworks In Ai-Driven Pharmaceutical Research & Development, Dhaval Dinesh Panchal, Osama Mohd Hash Ansari, Sudha Divya Madhuri Kallam

Harrisburg University Dissertations and Theses

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being utilized in pharmaceutical research and development to speed up drug discovery, enhance clinical trial design, and support regulatory decision-making. However, the increasingly rapid adoption of AI in the pharma industry has outpaced the development of consistent ethical governance, raising concerns related to data privacy, transparency, regulatory compliance, and stakeholder trust. This study explored the methods by which project managers could develop and utilize ethical decision-making frameworks to facilitate responsible AI implementation in pharmaceutical research and development. Guided by the Responsible Innovation framework, this research employed a mixed-methods design combining semi-structured interviews and quantitative surveys with …

Medicaid Expansion And Frequent Mental Distress Among U.S. Adults: Staggered Did Using Brfss, 2011 To 2024, Abimbola Adegoke, Kola Adegoke, Olajide Alfred Durojaye, Deborah Dawodu, Abiodun Isola Aluko, Akorede Adekoya, Kenneth A. Knapp

Health & Biomedical Sciences Faculty Publications

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) allowed states to expand Medicaid eligibility, potentially improving access to care and reducing psychological distress among lower-income adults. However, evidence on population-level mental health effects remains mixed, and conventional two-way fixed-effects difference-in-differences (DiD) estimates can be biased under staggered adoption. This study estimates the effect of Medicaid expansion on frequent mental distress (FMD) among non-elderly adults, with emphasis on lower-income adults. We used Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data from 2011 to 2024 and restricted the sample to adults aged 18 to 64 years. FMD was defined as ≥14 days of poor mental health …

Three-Dimensional Imaging Of Neuronal Activation Patterns In Chronic Neuropathic Pain And Opioid Pharmacology, Madeline Martinez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

Chronic neuropathic pain severely diminishes quality of life, yet the supraspinal neural circuits that sustain pain perception and mediate analgesic relief remain incompletely characterized. While peripheral and spinal pain pathways are well established, relatively few studies have mapped pain- or opioid-related neuronal activation across the entire brain. This dissertation employed activity-dependent genetic labeling (TRAP2/Ai9), whole-brain tissue clearing, light sheet microscopy, and graph-theoretic network analysis to characterize brain-wide activation patterns across chronic pain and analgesic conditions in mice.

In Chapter 1, we mapped supraspinal neuronal activation in a bilateral spared nerve injury model of chronic neuropathic pain. Although no individual region …

Engineering Of Genetically Encoded Programmable Calcium Channel Inhibitory Binders, Xiaoxuan Liu, Sher Ali, Tien-Hung Lan, Decheng Wang, Brendan Mckee, Tatsuki Nonomura, Siyao Liu, Feng Zhao, Michael X Zhu, Yun Huang, Qing Deng, Guolin Ma, Yubin Zhou

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Store-operated Ca2+ release-activated Ca2+ (CRAC) channels, composed of STIM and ORAI, are essential for immune and developmental processes, and their dysregulation underlies channelopathies such as Stormorken syndrome. Here, we report the engineering of genetically encoded CRAC channel inhibitory binders (CRABs) derived from the ORAI C-terminal tail. Guided by deep mutational scanning, we optimize a membrane-anchored CRAB variant that potently inhibits Ca2+ influx and NFAT signaling, and rescues thrombocytopenia-like phenotypes in a zebrafish model of Stormorken syndrome. To enable tunable inhibition, we further design oligomeric, optogenetic (Opto-CRAB), and chemogenetic (Chemo-CRAB) variants, providing graded and real-time control of CRAC activity. Chemo-CRAB further …

Ai’S Role In Searching For Evidence: Friend And Foe, Barbara (Basia) Delawska-Elliott, Brandon Wilkinson

Publications 2026-present

No abstract provided.

Comparative Physicochemical Characterization Of Porcine, Fish, And Bovine Gelatin In Gummy Candies: Toward Halal Nutraceutical Development, Marlyn Dian Laksitorini, Cici Darsih, Nunung Yuniarti, Rumiyati Rumiyati, Mohammad Zainal Abidin

Pharmaceutical Sciences and Research

Gummy candies have emerged as one of the most popular dosage forms for multivitamins and nutraceutical supplements, including those for brain health. Gelatin is the primary gelling agent used to achieve the gummy texture; however, the influence of different gelatin sources on the physicochemical properties of gummies has not been systematically examined. This study investigated the physicochemical characteristics of gummies prepared with porcine, bovine, and fish gelatin. The gummies were evaluated for mechanical properties (gumminess, hardness, cohesiveness, springiness, adhesiveness, and stringiness), color, water activity, antioxidant activity, and protein content. Additionally, the effects of intentional adulteration—specifically the addition of porcine gelatin …

Exploring Perspectives Of Autistic Individuals And Caregivers On Autism Inclusive Services In Public Libraries, Ayva J. Rose

LSU Master's Theses

Public libraries are increasingly recognized as important community hubs designed to promote literacy, learning, language, family engagement, and inclusivity. Despite this, autistic individuals may experience language, literacy, sensory, and social differences that could impact their ability to participate in literacy-based programming in libraries. Librarians currently report a desire to provide services that not only include but meaningfully support autistic children in their families; however, little research has examined how key stakeholders within the autism community perceive autism-inclusive programming within libraries. This research seeks to explore these perspectives and identify (1) perceived barriers to attending children’s library programs, (2) accommodations and …

Acute Traumatic Aortic Injury: What The Radiologist Needs To Know, Kristina Ramirez-Garcia, Catalina Jaramillo, Emma Ferguson, Jason Au, Erika Odisio, Gustavo S Oderich, Daniel Ocazionez, Cihan Duran, Thanila Macedo

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Acute traumatic aortic injury (ATAI) is a rare but life-threatening consequence of blunt trauma that requires prompt diagnosis and accurate imaging assessment. This review presents an imaging-based approach to ATAI, with emphasis on computed tomography angiography (CTA) as the first-line modality for diagnosis, grading, treatment planning, and follow-up. CTA enables the detection of both direct and indirect signs while also allowing for the assessment of lesion severity, extent, and associated findings that may influence management. Familiarity with common mimics and anatomic variants improves diagnostic confidence and helps avoid false positive interpretations. Careful protocol optimization, including multiphasic acquisition, bolus timing, and …

Intouch Week Of April 13, 2026, New York Medical College

InTouch

• Avi Dennis, Named Director of Human Resources
• GSBMS Celebrates a Long‑Standing Tradition of Excellence in Scientific Discovery
• Inaugural Careers in Bloom Event Brings SHSP Students and Local Employers Together
• It Takes Trial and Error to Reach Discovery
• Raising Awareness and Strengthening Readiness

Can Music-Based Interventions Improve The Prelinguistic Skills Of Young Children On The Autism Spectrum? A Systematic Review, Blythe Serrano

SACAD: Scholarly Activities

Many children on the autism spectrum have difficulty developing prelinguistic skills

such as joint attention, purposeful vocalization, and gesture, which are strongly

related to later expressive and receptive language development. This systematic

review aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of music-based interventions in

supporting the development of these foundational prelinguistic skills in young

children on the autism spectrum. Five databases were searched, yielding a total of

332 results. Five articles ultimately met criteria for inclusion. Results of these studies

were mixed, with studies in which the intervention was delivered by a professional

rather than a caregiver yielding more positive results. Additional …

Physical Therapy Patient Exercise Adherence Intervention, Carter D. Booe, Dean Clark, Ernesto Duenez, Aiden Haworth, Nathan Jaeger, Gabe Tross, Emery Wolfe

SACAD: Scholarly Activities

Non-adherence to prescribed home exercise programs significantly undermines the efficacy of physical therapy (PT), with research indicating only approximately 35% of patients fully adhere to regimens. This issue contributes to suboptimal recovery and places a staggering financial burden on the healthcare system, estimated at $100 billion to $300 billion annually. The Physical Therapy Home Exercise Adherence Trial (PT-HEAT) evaluates the effectiveness of a 14-week behavioral education intervention designed to improve patient adherence outside the clinical setting.

Utilizing the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA) model, this protocol involves PT staff administering a motivational-volitional screener, followed by trained student aides delivering targeted …

Continuous Light And Pinealectomy: Two Models Of Melatonin Deficiency Revealing Distinct Interactions With Vitamin D Deficiency On Blood Parameters, Rebaz Sedeeq Shekh, Ismail Mustafa Maulood

Polytechnic Journal

Modern lifestyles reduce sunlight exposure and increase artificial light at night, potentially promoting vitamin D deficiency (VDD) and melatonin (MEL) suppression. The two hormones regulate immunity, erythropoiesis, and platelet (PLT) indices, but their combined hematological effects are not well characterized. We investigated the independent and combined effects of VDD and MEL deficiency on leukocyte profiles, erythrocyte indices, and PLT parameters in albino rats using two 12-week models (n = 8/group): continuous light (CL)-induced MEL suppression (Control, CL, VDD, and CL + VDD) and pinealectomy (Px)-induced MEL deficiency (Sham. Px, VDD, Px + VDD). Complete blood counts (CBCs) and inflammation-related ratios …