Connecting Residents of Subsidized Housing With Mainstream Supportive Services: Challenges and Recommendations

Outlines challenges in expanding access to supportive services for older adults and families, including housing providers' lack of capacity or space to deliver services, limited direct funding, and restrictive eligibility rules. Lists HUD policy options

Culinary Care for Individuals with Distal Radius Fracture to Improve Function in the Kitchen

With return to function as the primary goal of occupational hand therapy, it is imperative to create comprehensive and client-centered care that targets functional reengagement. However, the biomedical approach used within hand therapy primarily targets the treatment of body structures rather than the patient’s occupational performance. Hand therapy must transcend the mere remediation of the patient’s physical impairment or injury and harness creativity and client-centered care to address the performance deficits of each patient. The purpose of this program was to incorporate occupation-based-interventions (OBI) into a traditional hand therapy clinical program to increase functional improvement and reengagement into the kitchen for individuals with a Distal Radius Fracture (DRF). The main goal of this capstone was to create the Culinary Care program addressing cooking performance deficits and promote safe and pain-free participation in the kitchen with the confidence to independently engage in cooking post DRF. In this study, we explored the benefits of creating an occupation-based-program, specifically targeting culinary activities, to aid in the recovery of individuals who have sustained a DRF. The creation of this six-week program, Culinary Care, was set into progressive stages in order to match the patient with appropriate challenges in their specific stage of recovery. The various cooking and kitchen activities were strategically matched with that research and my own data proved to be the most challenging for patients with DRF. One person completed the Culinary Care program, and one person participated as a control. Results indicated that the participant in the cooking program exhibited greater improvement across all measures compared to the participant receiving only standard hand therapy. Based on these results, my study indicates that a cooking-based intervention program could potentially lead to greater progress in the recovery from upper extremity injuries while also receiving standard hand therapy care. Occupation-based interventions used in conjunction with the biomechanical approaches practiced in standard hand therapy show promising effectiveness. The COPM should be utilized in addition to the Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand questionnaire (DASH) to measure activity and participation to employ client-centered practice. More scientific evidence regarding the OBI’s effectiveness in hand therapy is needed. Culinary Care will be implemented into Emory Musculoskeletal Institute once I begin my career there as an occupational therapist

A case study of a K-12 learning center in Southern California: exploring strategies to sustain learning centers for students with learning disabilities

The varied academic needs of students with learning disabilities throughout the U.S. and in Southern California, specifically, have driven demand for private learning centers. For the purposes of this study, a learning center refers to a private business that teaches primary and secondary school students with learning disabilities outside of the school system. However, these centers often struggle with business success and the retention of employees and clients. Little research exists to address this topic. Therefore, there is a need to explore strategies to sustain these centers for students with learning disabilities. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore strategies used by a successful K-12 learning center for students with learning disabilities in Southern California to sustain their business. Data was collected from interviews with four employees, observations from four visits, and seven types of archival data. The data were analyzed and grouped into the five deductive themes found in the literature review: training, relationships, innovation, structure, and customer development. Five new inductively developed themes resulted from the analysis of the data: Theme 1: Engaging in closed-loop communication with all stakeholders; Theme 2: Taking a holistic approach to student improvement; Theme 3: Providing differentiated instruction for a personalized experience; Theme 4: Engaging in a growth mindset; Theme 5: Setting an intention for the learning center to follow. Aspects such as innovation, flexibility, and intentionality proved to be beneficial to improving student outcomes and sustaining a learning center. Three conclusions were made from the study: Conclusion 1: A learning center can be sustained through a focus on the five literature themes of training, relationships, innovation, structure, and customer development; Conclusion 2: Flexibility allows for individualization, and continual improvement; Conclusion 3: Learning centers seeking a competitive advantage should focus on innovation

Chuck Close: The Cost of Behaving Badly, and #Metoo

In July of 2016, artist, Chuck Close was interviewed with a front cover spread in New York Times Magazine to discuss his legendary career. In December of 2017, Close was accused of sexually mistreating women on numerous occasions. This dissertation considers the powerful artist Chuck Close and repercussions following recent accusations against him made by multiple women. It will help us begin to understand how the recent allegations affect art museums and public exhibitions. There is also a discussion analyzing if an artists’ work can be separated from the reputation of its author. A hedonic regression, data analysis and interviews with art advisors were conducted to reveal what the aftermath of the scandal looked like. Little research has addressed sexual assault in the art world. In unpacking the problems that surface in the #Metoo movement, the thesis will also ask if there is a certain way a museum as public institutions should respond and what legal actions can be instituted to avoid future problems

Developing Understandings of Collaborative Partnerships Between University and Community

University faculty define collaborative partnerships with the community and examine how collaborative partnerships engender community-based research and the learning process of students in the College of Public Service. Considerations include how students are acculturated, specific benefits to learning, unanticipated benefits, and the unexpected challenges of collaborative partnerships between a university and a community

The Influence of Word Frequency and Aging on Lexical Access

Visual word recognition has been a central area of psychological inquiry over the past century. The current dissertation examines how visual word recognition changes as a function of age by focusing on the influence of word frequency, or how commonly a word is encountered. Word frequency is arguably the strongest predictor of visual word recognition performance across a variety of language tasks, and the most influential factor in models of language processing. All models of visual word recognition include a strong role for word frequency but often assume different underlying mechanisms, which produce differing predictions for age changes. Although there is already a literature examining word frequency effects in younger and older adults, these studies have produced inconsistent results, possibly due to procedural limitations and task-specific processes. This dissertation explores the influence of task and age on the word frequency effect, while directly examining individual differences (e.g., changes in vocabulary, vision, education) in order to better understand the mechanisms underlying word frequency effects. In contrast to the dichotomous approach of examining extreme groups of young and older adults, or extreme bands of word frequency, the present study examined both variables in a continuous manner. The primary finding is that the word frequency effect does not appear to change as a function of age across all three tasks considered. This finding is discussed in reference to previous inconsistent findings in the literature and important theoretical implications

Factors associated with the goal of treatment in the last week of life in old compared to very old patients: a population-based death certificate survey

Background: Little is known about the type of care older people of different ages receive at the end of life. The goal of treatment is an important parameter of the quality of end-of-life care. This study aims to provide an evaluation of the main goal of treatment in the last week of life of people aged 86 and older compared with those between 75 and 85 and to examine how treatment goals are associated with age. Methods: Population-based cross sectional survey in Flanders, Belgium. A stratified random sample of death certificates was drawn of people who died between 1 June and 30 November 2007. The effective study sample included 3,623 deaths (response rate: 58.4%). Non-sudden deaths of patients aged 75 years and older were selected (N = 1681). Main outcome was the main goal of treatment in the last week of life (palliative care or life-prolonging/curative treatment). Results: In patients older than 75, the main goal of treatment in the last week was in the majority of cases palliative care (77.9%). Patients between 75 and 85 more often received life-prolonging/curative treatment than older patients (26.6% vs. 15.8%). Most patient and health care characteristics are similarly related to the main goal of treatment in both age groups. The patient's age was independently related to having comfort care as the main goal of treatment. The main goal of treatment was also independently associated with the patient's sex, cause and place of death and the time already in treatment. Conclusion: Age is independently related to the main goal of treatment in the last week of life with people over 85 being more likely to receive palliative care and less likely to receive curative/life-prolonging treatment compared with those aged 75-85. This difference could be due to the patient's wishes but could also be the result of the attitudes of care givers towards the treatment of older people