Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

The Future Of Incog (Is Now), Peter Bragge, Mark Theodore Bayley, Diana Velikonja, Leanne Togher, Jennie Ponsford, Shannon Janzen, Amber Harnett, Ailene Kua, Eleni Patsakos, Amanda Mcintyre, Robert Teasell, Mary Kennedy, Shawn Marshall

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

IT HAS BEEN 8 years since the first iteration of the INCOG clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) were published. Much has happened since 2014, and a considerable body of evidence has been published in the various domains of cognitive rehabilitation research represented in this special issue. Over this time, significant developments in the science of identifying, appraising, and distilling research evidence into practically applicable CPGs have emerged, as well as implementation efforts to ensure meaningful change in care delivery.

Role Of Vitamin D, Folate, And Cobalamin Deficiency In Mycobacterium Avium Paratuberculosis Infection And Inflammation, Joseph Vaccaro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Vitamin D, folate, and cobalamin (vitamin B12) are crucial micronutrients in human physiology that are necessary for healthy calcium, phosphorus, and single-carbon metabolism. Recent studies have indicated that these vitamins also affect the inflammatory response in ways unrelated to their well-characterized deficiencies. Accordingly, analysis of their effect on chronic inflammatory diseases like Crohn's disease (CD) is warranted. This investigation examines the effects of vitamin deficiency on macrophages and intestinal epithelial cells upon exposure to Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis (MAP,) a pathogen capable of triggering CD, to model the inflammatory response in clinical CD patients. ELISA analysis of CD patient plasma established …

The Associations Among Racial Discrimination, Perceived Stress And Birth Satisfaction Among Black Women, Amanda De La Serna

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The purpose of this dissertation research was to examine the associations among experiences of racial discrimination, perceived stress and birth satisfaction among Black women, and to examine the mediating effect of perceived stress on the association of experiences of racial discrimination with birth satisfaction among Black women. The first manuscript is an integrative literature review which evaluates prior research of the association of stress with birth satisfaction, with consideration to studies that included Black women in their samples. This review revealed a need for further research evaluating stress and birth satisfaction specific to Black women. The second manuscript examines the …

Application Of Mixture Models For Doubly Inflated Count Data, Monika Arora, N. Rao Chaganty

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Publications

In health and social science and other fields where count data analysis is important, zero-inflated models have been employed when the frequency of zero count is high (inflated). Due to multiple reasons, there are scenarios in which an additional count value of k > 0 occurs with high frequency. The zero- and k-inflated Poisson distribution model (ZkIP) is more appropriate for such situations. The ZkIP model is a mixture distribution with three components: degenerate distributions at 0 and k count and a Poisson distribution. In this article, we propose an alternative and computationally fast expectation–maximization (EM) algorithm to obtain the parameter …

Analysis Of Multi-Drug Resistant Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Using Split Deoxyribozymes, Abryana Fergus

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Globally, tuberculosis, a disease caused by the species of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) complex, stands as a leading cause of death from a single infectious agent. Even though antituberculous drugs are available, treatment is challenging due to antibiotic resistance associated with point mutations in the bacterial genome. Resistance to the first-line antibiotics – rifampin and isoniazid – results in multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR) requiring a more complicated treatment regimen. Timely and accurate identification of drug-resistant TB cases can help prescribe the most effective treatment and prevent the spread of infection. This research aims to develop an assay to discern multi-drug resistant forms …

Are You Ready To Engage? The Impact Of Decisional Conflict On Advance Directives Education, Marcia Brown

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

End-of-Life (EOL) refers to medical support given to those facing death and advance directives (AD) is a document that helps to distinguish the nature of that support. The literature suggests conflict is a barrier in the advance care planning (ACP) process and if it remains unresolved in the absence of an AD, there is prolongation of unwanted treatment, increased costs, and lower quality of care. The purpose of this research was to uncover decisional conflict and determine the usefulness of ACP engagement factors in faith communities through a unique intervention – CADE (Conflict and Advance Directives Education). Three theories – …

Migraine Among Neurology Outpatient Attendants In Mansoura University: Sociodemographic And Migraine Comorbidities Analysis, Mohammad Youssif Ismail Ibrahim, Tamer Mohammad Belal, Hossam Mohammad Egila, Ahmed Gamal Azab

Mansoura Medical Journal

Background: Twelve percent of the population is thought to suffer from migraines. 1% to 2% of individuals worldwide suffer from chronic migraine (CM). Approximately 2.5% of cases who have episodic migraine (EM) develop CM. A number of risk factors are linked to the development of CM. Independent of medication; there is a sizable short-term variance in migraine frequency. Sleep difficulties, psychological illness, and cardiovascular disease are all linked to migraine. It is the second most incapacitating illness globally. Objectives: To evalaute the sociodemographic characteristics of migraineurs and their different co-morbidities. Patients and methods: A cross-sectional study with analytic component was …

Evaluating The Impact Of Using A Wound-Specific Oral Nutritional Supplement To Support Wound Healing In A Rehabilitation Setting, Rya K Clark, Argyrios Stampas, Kirk W Kerr, Jeffrey L Nelson, Suela Sulo, Luis Leon-Novelo, Esther Ngan, Dehuti Pandya

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Chronic wounds adversely affect patient quality of life, increase the risk of mortality, and impose high costs on healthcare systems. Since protein-energy malnutrition or specific nutrient deficiencies can delay wound healing, nutritionally focused care is a key strategy to help prevent or treat the occurrence of non-healing wounds. The objective of our study of inpatients in a rehabilitation hospital was to quantify the effect of daily wound-specific oral nutritional supplementation (WS-ONS) on healing chronic wounds. Using electronic medical records, we conducted a retrospective analysis of patients with chronic wounds. We identified records for (a) a treatment group who received standard …

Psychopathy And Insight Within An Incarcerated Population, Courtney Steinorth

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The clinical construct of psychopathy has been researched extensively relative to incarceration. Cognitive insight has shown to be related to prognosis and treatment outcomes with severe psychopathologies. There has been, however, limited research on both psychopathy and cognitive insight in relation to incarceration. The purpose of the present study was to examine the moderation of cognitive insight levels on rates of incarceration (the number of times someone has been incarcerated in a government detention facility) based on their level of self-reported psychopathic traits. A brief demographic questionnaire, the Beck Cognitive Insight Scale, and the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale were administered …

A Comparison Of Peak Ground Reaction Forces Of Pitches From The Stretch And Windup, Richard D. Edwards

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Ground reaction forces can help coaches and players understand the lower extremity biomechanics of pitching in baseball. Research has told us that there are repeatable characteristics of ground reaction forces that pitchers produce during a pitch. This study examines the differences in peak ground reaction forces produced from pitching from the stretch versus pitching from the wind-up. Five variables were recorded for each pitch from the push-off leg and the landing leg. Landing forces were then compared to landing forces of the other pitching style and the same comparison was made for the push-off leg. This was achieved by altering …

The Impact Of Profession On Depression, Weston David Phipps

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Depression has long been a focused topic in the world of clinical psychology. While the exact nature of what drives an individual into depression has been difficult to determine, new at-risk populations are emerging every day, giving clinicians and businesses alike the opportunity to monitor their clients/workers health and stability more closely. The current study aims to examine the connections between individuals born into low resource environments and the likelihood of them taking on high-risk professions later in life. These high-risk professions are thought to be nurturing grounds for depressive symptoms when compared to lower risk professions. The current study’s …

An Explainable Deep Learning Prediction Model For Severity Of Alzheimer's Disease From Brain Images, Godwin O. Ekuma

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have become the go-to method for medical imaging classification on various imaging modalities for binary and multiclass problems. Deep CNNs extract spatial features from image data hierarchically, with deeper layers learning more relevant features for the classification application. The effectiveness of deep learning models are hampered by limited data sets, skewed class distributions, and the undesirable "black box" of neural networks, which decreases their understandability and usability in precision medicine applications. This thesis addresses the challenge of building an explainable deep learning model for a clinical application: predicting the severity of Alzheimer's disease (AD). AD …

Sex-Dependent Effects Of Induced Acute Inflammation On Glucose Homeostasis And Rna Editing Enzymes, Christian A. Rivas

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The first line of defense against bodily insults, like pathogen invasion, is the innate immune system. Innate immunity sets in motion countless cascades that result in inflammation. Inflammation simultaneously affects multiple biological processes like metabolism and gene expression. Males and females react differently to inflammation. To understand both molecular and physiological sex differences in inflammation, we examined how inflammation affects gene expression and glucose metabolism. Adenosine deaminase acting on RNA (ADAR1) is upregulated by inflammation and catalyzes RNA editing, a process where nucleotides encoded by the genome are modified. ADAR1 also controls the innate immune reaction by decreasing activity of …

Mask R-Cnn Assisted 2.5d Object Detection Pipeline Of 68Ga-Psma-11 Pet/Ct-Positive Metastatic Pelvic Lymph Node After Radical Prostatectomy From Solely Ct Imaging, Di Xu, Martin Ma, Minsong Cao, Amar U. Kishan, Nicholas G. Nickols, Fabien Scalzo, Ke Sheng

All Faculty Open Access Publications

Prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) is a molecular and functional imaging modality with better restaging accuracy over conventional imaging for detecting prostate cancer in men suspected of lymph node (LN) progression after definitive therapy. However, the availability of PSMA PET/CT is limited in both low-resource settings and for repeating imaging surveillance. In contrast, CT is widely available, cost-effective, and routinely performed as part of patient follow-up or radiotherapy workflow. Compared with the molecular activities, the morphological and texture changes of subclinical LNs in CT are subtle, making manual detection of positive LNs infeasible. Instead, we …

Disparities In Mental Health Technology Among African Americans: Breaking Cultural Inclusion Barriers, Nyoki Cosey-Brown

DSW Capstone Projects

Mental health technology is a healthcare delivery model of the future. The engagement in virtual healthcare was intensified when traditional healthcare methods were inaccessible during the federal restrictions implemented due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Utilizing digital apparatuses for healthcare improved the convenience, efficiency, and accessibility of various mental health services that were inoperable in past healthcare models. However, the historical constructs of stigma, discrimination, inequity, exclusion, and structural racism in mental healthcare were prevalent problems that remained present in virtual mental health platforms concerning the experiences of African-American patients and professionals who utilized the spaces.

This research explored mental health …

State Level Mental Health Education Compared To Suicide-Related Behavior In Adolescents, 2019, Sonia Rao

Honors Theses

Objective: Determining correlations between state level mental and emotional health (M&E) education and suicide prevention (SP) education to suicide-related behaviors (I.e. feeling sad or hopeless, suicide ideation, making a suicide plan, suicide attempt, suicide attempt treated by medical personnel, and death by suicide) within high school adolescents aged 15-19 within the United States in 2019.

Methods: State level education policies, M&E and SP, were retrieved from the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE). Self-reported adolescent suicide related behaviors were retrieved from the 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS). Data on deaths by suicide of youth aged 15-19 …

A Umls-Based Investigation Of Laterality In Biomedical Terminologies, Rashmie Abeysinghe, Xubing Hao, Licong Cui, Guo-Qiang Zhang

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Laterality is an important anatomic directional property indicating the sidedness of body structures, diseases, and procedures. Errors in laterality could have catastrophic consequences in patient care. In this paper, we investigate how different biomedical terminologies organize terms indicating laterality. We leverage the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) to identify lateral terms in different terminologies. For each lateral term, we attempt to obtain other matched lateral terms and further analyze how they are interrelated. Our results indicated that only 1.68% of the matched lateral term-pairs are hierarchically related. It was also seen that 44.24% of matched-pairs were siblings. We found that …

Extracting Temporal Expressions Of First Seizure Onset From Epilepsy Patient Discharge Summaries, Shiqiang Tao, Rashmie Abeysinghe, Blanca Talavera De La Esperanza, Samden Lhatoo, Guo-Qiang Zhang, Licong Cui

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Early onset of seizure is a potential risk factor for Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP). However, the first seizure onset information is often documented as clinical narratives in epilepsy monitoring unit (EMU) discharge summaries. Manually extracting first seizure onset time from discharge summaries is time consuming and labor-intensive. In this work, we developed a rule-based natural language processing pipeline for automatically extracting the temporal information of patients’ first seizure onset from EMU discharge summaries. We use the Epilepsy and Seizure Ontology (EpSO) as the core knowledge resource and construct 4 extraction rules based on 300 randomly selected EMU discharge …

Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors: Friend Or Foe, Antonio Cordova, Md, Jesse Powell, Md, Whitney Elg-Salsman, Md, Caroline Mcculley, Md

Poster Presentations

No abstract provided.

Biocybersecurity And Deterrence: Hypothetical Rwandan Considerations, Issah Samori, Gbadebo Odularu, Lucas Potter, Xavier-Lewis Palmer

Community & Environmental Health Faculty Publications

Digitalization and sustainability are popular words within modern disciplines as practitioners each look toward the future of their respective fields. Specifically for the African continent, which is making great strides in developmental targets, those two terms are central to core aspects of policy initiatives that may foster cooperation across its varied lands and nations. One of the underlying challenges that confront Africa is a lack of strong regional integration across socioeconomic and political programs; there is value in African regions having more regional connectedness. We assess the rate of regional integration and development in Africa and discuss how to alleviate …

Promoting Well-Being Among Intercollegiate Student-Athletes: A Gratitude Intervention Using Positive Psychology, Laura Kruger

Dissertations and Theses

Intercollegiate student-athletes face rising stress and pressures which challenge their well-being and mental health, and sometimes with alarming concerns. Over the years, supportive services and resources specifically available to student-athletes have not evolved at the same pace as student-athlete needs. Also, barriers and stigmas hinder student-athletes from readily accessing supportive mental health services. The high stress of student-athletes can contribute to the development of negative mental health symptoms and impairs positive well-being. Evidence supports how outreach initiatives help student-athletes. Positive psychology, including gratitude as a positive psychological state, has shown benefits to well-being. This experimental study design researched if the …

Community Health Workers In Rural Palliative Care: A Mixed Method Exploration Of The South Dakota Context, Angela Beth Kroeze Visser

Dissertations and Theses

Rural communities in the United States face challenges in providing palliative care due to the limited number of providers and the distances patients must travel to access services. Community health workers (CHWs) are community members who provide a connection between communities and health or social services providers and offer a potential innovation as members of palliative care teams to expand connections to palliative care services. However, there is little known about how CHWs are integrated into palliative care teams and whether palliative care providers and advocates would view this innovation as feasible, acceptable, and appropriate for the rural palliative care …

Research Model Applications In The Investigation Of Vascular Disease Treatments, Alex Anthony Dangler

Dissertations and Theses

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a pressing global health issue with significant socioeconomic consequences. Within the spectrum of CVDs, peripheral artery disease (PAD) and aortic disease necessitate the development of effective and safe treatments. To achieve this, various research models are employed to investigate molecular mechanisms of cells, understand cellular interactions in vascular diseases, assess biocompatibility, and test and evaluate medical devices. This dissertation examines research models and their applications in the advancement of treatments for vascular diseases. For the evaluation of liposome delivery systems in PAD, an ApoE-/- cellular mouse model was employed to investigate the cellular uptake of liposomes …

The Impact Of Resilience And Professional Practice Demographics On The Professional Quality Of Life Of Recreational Therapists, Kelley Mccubbin

Dissertations and Theses

Compassion fatigue can worsen recreational therapists’ quality of life, leaving lasting impacts on a professional’s a professionals' work, home, and social environments. There is little to no research that discusses the impact of resilience and professional practice demographics on compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue among recreational therapists. This nonexperimental correlational dissertation study examined the impact of resilience and professional practice demographics on the professional quality life (compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue) in a group of recreational therapists. A total of 677 recreational therapists were analyzed after responding to an online survey that included a professional practice demographic questionnaire, the Professional …

Adaptation To Sport Retirement In Division I Student-Athletes, Andrea Cota Powell

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation utilizes a mixed-methods design to explore adaptation to sport retirement among Division I student-athletes. Sport retirement is a major life transition that can elicit changes in support systems, identity crises, and feelings of loss, failure, and grief. Transitioning out of sport is a phenomenon that over 90% of collegiate student-athletes experience when their four years of NCAA eligibility expires. It is a phenomenon that all athletes experience at some point in their lives. To transition out of sports, one must adapt to post-sport life. Study one of this dissertation explored the phenomenon of occupational retirement through concept analysis …

Trial In Progress: Sonoporation For Disrupting The Pancreatic Cancer Microenvironment To Enhance Chemotherapy Delivery And Improve Outcomes, James Posey, John R. Eisenbrey, Babar Bashir, Patrick Mille, Atrayee Basu Mallick, Rajan Singla, Spiros Kotopoulis, Ingrid Nordaas, Audun Magerøy Trelsgård, Tæraneh Jouleh, Georg Dimcevski, Odd Helge Gilja, Flemming Forsberg

Department of Medical Oncology Posters

Background

• Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is 3% of cancers diagnosed in the United States with 62,210 new cases expected in 2022, but it is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths.
• Hence, there is a considerable clinical need to develop innovative strategies for effective drug delivery and treatment monitoring, resulting in improved outcomes for patients with PDAC.
• Sonoporation is a novel method that can enhance the therapeutic efficacy of co-administered chemotherapy by localized contrastenhanced ultrasound imaging (CEUS) of gas-filled microbubbles (ultrasound contrast agent UCA), which temporarily changes the tumor vascular microenvironment by increasing leakage from angiogenic vessels through microstreaming, shockwaves …

An Analytic And Systemic View Of The Digital Transformation Of Healthcare, Xuejuan J. Zhang

Full-Text Theses & Dissertations

Industry 4.0 represents a digital revolution that is driven by technologies that blur the lines between the physical and digital worlds. Industry 4.0, the latest industrial revolution, is poised to have a profound impact on all aspects of society. In order to understand how the healthcare industry is being transformed by the convergence of the physical and digital realms, a systems perspective is taken in this study. Two research questions are addressed regarding the opportunities and interventions that can be provided by both analytical and systems conceptions of digital transformation. I use a systemic literature review approach to address the …

Food Insecurity In The Working Poor, Carol L. Haines

Full-Text Theses & Dissertations

Food insecurity in the working poor impacts many stakeholders other than the individuals unable to obtain enough healthy food. These stakeholders include employers, care providers, insurance companies and the government. Although there are some programs available to improve food insecurity conditions, more can be done by bringing together these varied stakeholders. This dissertation examines the opinions of many stakeholders to understand if novel ideas would improve food insecurity in the working poor.

Because the causes for individuals suffering from food insecurity are dissimilar, food insecurity is a complicated problem which can only be improved by applying many different solutions. A …

The New Jersey Fee-For-Service Model: Evidence Of Social Entrepreneurship In A New Public/ Private Business Relationship, Christine Wiltsee

Full-Text Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on a shift in the case management function in New Jersey’s Division of Developmental Disabilities. The shift, predicated on the state operating within the Medicaid Home and Community Based Model, resulted in a restructuring from exclusively state operated services to a new public/private relationship. The focus of this study was the unique market opportunity that resulted and the engagement of social entrepreneurs. Using the framework developed by Dees (1998), the characteristics of a social entrepreneur were explored. Through semi-structured interviews with individuals who initiated new for-profit businesses in social services, data were collected that evaluated and compared …

Outpatient Physical Therapists’ Knowledge, Attitudes, And Behaviors Regarding Eating Disorder Screening, Esther Thomas, Morgan Russo, Kara Martin, Kristen Karnish, Audrey Campbell

Student Research Poster Presentations 2023

Background & Purpose: Approximately 9% of Americans will have an eating disorder in their lifetime1 and these disorders can impact the recovery of patients receiving physical therapy services. Physical therapists (PT) should be aware if a patient has a history of, or current history of an eating disorder or nutritional deficiency as these can negatively impact a patient’s participation and optimal functioning. Minimal research has been performed related to physical therapy and eating disorders. Determining outpatient physical therapists’ knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors towards eating disorders and if they are screening for eating disorders is the first step in furthering research …