Medical Humanities Commons^™

Medicine And The Museum: An Experiential Case Study In Art History Pedagogy And Practice, Marcia Brennan

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

This article brings three scholarly and professional perspectives to bear on museum-based learning experiences for undergraduate pre-medical and STEM students. In the first section, Marcia Brennan describes the seminar on “Medicine and the Museum: Clinical Aesthetics and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston” that she teaches at Rice University. Brennan is a modernist art historian, and her discussion focuses on the ways in which classes such as this can contribute meaningfully to undergraduate pre-medical and STEM education. Brennan collaborated with Joshua Eyler, who served as Executive Director of Rice University’s Center for Teaching Excellence. In the second section, Eyler discusses …

Healing, Srinivasan Ragothaman

Creative Work

This is a poem reflecting on the current human conditions in the USA, India-China conflict, racism, and other human conflicts. It calls for healing and asks every one to follow the golden rule: treat others as you want them to treat you!

Ethical Imperatives Critical To Effective Disease Control In The Coronavirus Pandemic: Recognition Of Global Health Interdependence As A Driver Of Health And Social Equity, George A. Gellert Md, Mph, Mpa

Journal of Health Ethics

Ethical imperatives critical to effective disease control in the coronavirus pandemic: Recognition of global health interdependence as a driver of health and social equity

George A. Gellert MD, MPH, MPA

ABSTRACT

Decades into the era of emerging infectious diseases, the 2019-2020 coronavirus pandemic has caught the world, and the United States in particular, poorly prepared to engage effective public health disease prevention and control measures. In part, this reflects poor public health planning, response, logistical preparation and pandemic readiness, and complacency by governments and disease control agencies. In terms of future responses to emerging infection pandemics, these deficiencies can be …

Tuskegee Syphilis Study Not America's Only Medical Scandal: Chester M. Southam, Md, Henrietta Lacks, And The Sloan-Kettering Research Scandal, Leonard F. Vernon

Journal of Health Ethics

The words “human medical experimentation” conjure up visions of Nazi medicine, which has come to exemplify the worst evils in the history of humankind. Places like Auschwitz and Dachau, where human life was cheap and test subjects plentiful were used as laboratories.

In 2010 the US government apologized to Guatemala for allowing U.S. doctors to infect Guatemalan prisoners and mental patients with syphilis 65 years earlier, while acknowledging dozens of similar experiments in the United States. These included studies that often involved making healthy people sick. such as in the Tuskegee syphilis study.

These experiments were often life threatening and …

Service-Learning As Global Citizenship Education: Acting Locally On Global Challenges And Concerns, Genejane M. Adarlo

Health Sciences Faculty Publications

Service-learning is a method of teaching that is increasingly used in higher education. Studies are few though on how local placements in service-learning can bring about global citizenship and promote social justice. Hence, this study used multi-sited ethnography to examine the teaching-learning process of service-learning to better understand the construction of civic identity and sense of agency among students when this method of teaching was approached within the larger context of social justice. Study participants included students taking part in service-learning efforts for literacy and maternal health from Miriam College and Ateneo de Manila University, respectively. Data were gathered and …

An Innovative Editing Service For Medical Students, Lisa Price

Libraries Scholarship

Background: The Library serves students, staff and faculty of the Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine and related Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Students face the daunting yet crucial tasks of preparing Personal Statements for residency, scholarship and other applications. Students and residents are also encouraged to seek publication opportunities. We recognized a need for proofreading and editing assistance, and one of our librarians had the background and experience to provide such a service.

Description: We developed a flyer announcing available services and distributed it within the library, at student and residency orientations, committee meetings and other appropriate campus events. …

Immunotherapy: Therapy Vs. Enhancement, Mariah Daly

Honors Program Theses

The battle against cancer is a long-standing struggle that has resulted in new information and the development of novel medical technologies. Current research aims to figure out a way to reprogram cells and bodily mechanisms to eliminate those cells that are cancerous without destroying healthy cells in the process. Methods which use the body’s own mechanisms, such as immunotherapy, have shown and continue to show potential for specifically targeting cancer cells. Adoptive T cell therapy is one form of immunotherapy that has gained significant attention and focus in the field. Therapies improve conditions up to the normal state of being, …

Dietary Nitrate And The Oral Microbiome In Obesity, Health And Exercise, Christian E. Behrens

All ETDs from UAB

Obesity ranks among the top growing health concerns worldwide. The prevalence of obesity at all life stages continues to rise with nearly 40% of adults and 35% of children/adolescents being affected. Equally troublesome is the increased risk for a number of comorbidities associated with obesity including cardiovascular disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and certain types of cancer. The successful treatment of obesity, particularly long-term, continues to prove challenging and is often met with limited success. This highlights the importance of continued investigation into alternative strategies that may reduce the incidence and severity of obesity and associated pathophysiologies. Regular physical …

Stress And Cancer Treatment: How A Family’S Adaptability And Cohesion Affects Financial Stress, Emily Marie Johnson

Theses and Dissertations--Family Sciences

According to the American Cancer Society (2019), it is estimated that 1,762,450 new cancer diagnoses occurred in 2019 in the United States. Currently, cancer remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide (American Cancer Society, 2019). As cancer affects the family, roles within the family will shift (e.g., transitioning to a caregiving relationship), causing each family member to adapt. With the costs of cancer steadily increasing, this potentially leaves a devastating impact on the family. When considering family function in terms of Family Systems, John Rolland created the Family Systems Illness Model to explain how families adapt to an …

Vulvodynia, It’S In My Head: Mad Methods Toward Crip Coalition, Renee Dumaresque

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article employs a mad transdisciplinary approach to autoethnography to detail vulvodynia — or chronic vulvar pain — within the system of (dis)ability. Through autoethnography, the self operates as a mobile orientation from which to identify and disrupt the colonial rationalities that differentially construct and narrate vulvodynia across sites of madness and disability. Through historical, discursive, and autoethnographic analysis, I locate vulvodynia’s role in various processes of subject, race, and settler-state formation from the nineteenth century up to the neoliberal present.

Racial Residential Segregation And Infant Mortality In The United States, Annmarie Jones

Student Research Symposium

People of color in the United States experience poorer health and higher mortality rates than their white counterparts and these outcomes are a result of structural racism. Structural racism refers to the ways in which societies foster racial discrimination, through mutually reinforcing inequitable systems (in housing, education, employment, earnings, benefits, credit, media, health care, criminal justice, and so on) that in turn reinforce discriminatory beliefs, values, and distribution of resources. These together affect the risk of adverse health outcomes (1). Research shows that racial disparities in prenatal, infant and neonatal mortality is a serious public health problem in the United …

Internet Of Things For Sustainable Human Health, Abdul Salam

Computer Information Technology Faculty Publications

The sustainable health IoT has the strong potential to bring tremendous improvements in human health and well-being through sensing, and monitoring of health impacts across the whole spectrum of climate change. The sustainable health IoT enables development of a systems approach in the area of human health and ecosystem. It allows integration of broader health sub-areas in a bigger archetype for improving sustainability in health in the realm of social, economic, and environmental sectors. This integration provides a powerful health IoT framework for sustainable health and community goals in the wake of changing climate. In this chapter, a detailed description …

Perspectives On Student Hunger And Poverty, Ruchi Patel

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Poverty is a factor that affects many aspects of one’s life. For a student looking to get a bachelor’s degree at a university or college, money is one of the top priorities to look at. The high cost of universities and colleges create financial strain affecting the ability of students to obtain better opportunities. Furthermore, many college students struggling financially come from economically challenged backgrounds. Economic struggles related to college cost, housing and food insecurity can lead to malnourished students as well as high stress levels. Approximately 36% of Univeristy students and 42% of community college students were food insecure …

An Analysis Of The Impact Of The Long-Term Care Partnership Program On The Number Of Lives Covered By Long-Term Care Insurance And Medicaid Expenditures In Nursing Homes, Cheris Kline

All ETDs from UAB

The growing number of people over the age of 65 in the U.S. will exacerbate already inadequate resources for long-term care, producing increased public health costs. The Long-Term Care Partnership Program (LTCPP) was proposed to save Medicaid expenditures by incentivizing the purchase of long-term care insurance. At this juncture, it is unclear if the partnership program saves the government money. This study draws from the expected utility theory and resource dependency theory to determine whether the LTCPP has increased the purchase of private long-term care insurance and reduced Medicaid expenditures in nursing homes in states that have adopted the partnership …

Exploring Diet Quality In Early Care And Education Centers: Measures, Policies, And Center Characteristics, Elizabeth Kroeger

All ETDs from UAB

Over 65% of children ages 2-5 years attend Early Care and Education (ECE) centers where they consume most of their daily caloric intake; however, children at these centers are not meeting the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). This could suggest poor diet quality, which is a risk factor for diet-related diseases. Currently, diet quality in ECE centers is measured through the assessment of either the food/beverages listed on the lunch menu (menu), served to the children during lunch (served), or consumed by the children during lunch (consumed). However, the lunch meal may be better viewed as a process, rather than …

An Analysis Of Hospitalist Programs In Critical Access Hospitals, Robert Thomas Peterson

All ETDs from UAB

AN ANALYSIS OF HOSPITALIST PROGRAMS IN CRITICAL ACCESS HOSPITALS ROBERT T. PETERSON HEALTHCARE LEADERSHIP ABSTRACT Hospitalists are physicians specially trained in the care of hospitalized patients. In critical access hospitals (CAHs), the annual cost of a physician-based hospitalist program is approximately $1M. The high cost of hospitalist programs must be offset by the hospitalists’ ability to reduce the cost of inpatient care and/or by their ability to generate additional inpatient volume and revenue. Two well-established metrics are used to measure hospitalist performance: the average inpatient length of stay (ALOS) and the average daily census (ADC). Well-performing hospitalist programs are expected …

Health Systems And Societal Level Community Benefit, Meghan Blueberry Mccarthy

All ETDs from UAB

In America, the amount spent on community benefit as tax exemption justification for not-for-profit health care is approaching 100 billion dollars annually. There are multiple categories for community benefit as defined by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The overwhelming majority of these funds are spent on individual financial assistance rather than societal level community health investments to address social determinates of health. Societal level community benefit is defined as the total spending on community health improvement, cash & in-kind donations to community groups and community building as reported on IRS form 990 Schedule H. These three combined itemized areas of …

The Comparison Of Two Diabetes Self-Management Education Programs In The Reduction Of Patient A1c Levels, Edward Sharpless

All ETDs from UAB

This dissertation was a quasi-experimental research study exploring the effectiveness of two educational teaching methods with patients with diabetes. One teaching method utilized an education framework called the Conversation Map tools, a group-based, highly interactive learning experience using colorful visual tools, activity cards and sharing of real-life experiences. The other method was a traditional, lecture-style class taught by a health educator using overhead slides and handouts.

Secondary data from a regional health system in the Western U.S. was used to test the hypothesis that participants in the Conversation Map classes would report a larger drop in A1c levels compared to …

Assessment Of Emergency Department High Utilizer Program In Public Health System Setting, Michael Malaise

All ETDs from UAB

is study examined whether a case management model designed to reduce emergency department utilization among patients described as super-utilizers in a public health system could also reduce the per patient cost of those super-utilizers. The setting for this study was a large public health system in a major metropolitan area. The study focused on a low-income, urban population. Given the program’s stated desire to improve the self-efficacy of patients over time so that they could take more ownership of their own health status, this study reviewed the program within the framework of self-efficacy theory. This research predicted that the case …

Fixed And Variable Costs At Critical Access Hospitals, Jeremy J. Lyman

All ETDs from UAB

Cost structures (the ratio of fixed to variable costs) vary across and within indus-tries. Hospital managers and policymakers can make better decisions when they under-stand cost structures, including marginal costs (the change in the total cost that arises when the quantity produced is increased by one unit). Although some studies have inves-tigated hospital cost structures, the results have been mixed and less than definitive, and very little attention has been given to critical access hospitals and marginal costs specifi-cally. Rural hospitals, including critical access hospitals, have increasingly experienced financial distress. Between 2005 and 2019, 159 rural hospitals closed across the …