Following the Iron Lady and Finding a University: A Phenomenological Study of Organizational Identity

Higher education culture is steeped in institutional identity and ties to history. But what happens when that history is challenged, and an institution must change its name? While a merger was not initially intended for Kearney State College, merging into the University of Nebraska system was the only way to reflect the change and growth that emulated the type of institution it had become. By interviewing sixteen participants that lived the experience of the merge, a concise and collective history of the events that led to the creation of the University of Nebraska at Kearney was obtained and studied. Through phenomenological methodology, the important story of the institution gave way to the institution’s identity before, during and after the merge, solidifying not only who Kearney State was, but also who UNK is. Future research implicates the importance of studying the increasing commonality of higher education institutions merging, be it strategic or for survival, and opens higher education to be researched further not only into the importance of documented histories but also for studying the effect of change in identity, particularly on the human capital component. Advisor: Marilyn Grad

Ethnolinguistic concordance and the receipt of postpartum IUD counseling services in Sri Lanka.

CONTEXT: Ethnic and linguistic concordance are important dimensions of the patient-physician relationship, and are linked to health care disparities. However, evidence on the associations between health behavior and outcomes and patient-provider concordance is limited, especially in low- and middle-income settings. METHODS: To examine how concordance between women and their primary health midwife is associated with women's receipt of postpartum IUD counseling, observational data from a cluster-randomized trial assessing an intervention to increase postpartum IUD counseling were used. Data on 4,497 women who delivered at six hospitals in Sri Lanka between September 2015 and March 2017 were merged with data on 245 primary health midwives, and indicators of linguistic concordance, ethnic concordance and their interaction were generated. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to assess the associations between concordance and women's receipt of counseling. RESULTS: Women from non-Sinhalese groups in Sri Lanka face disparities in the receipt of postpartum IUD counseling. Compared with the ethnolinguistic majority (Sinhalese women who speak only Sinhala), non-Sinhalese women have lower odds of having received postpartum IUD counseling, whether they speak both Sinhala and Tamil (odds ratio, 0.6) or only Tamil (0.5). Ethnic discordance- rather than linguistic discordance-is the primary driver of this disparity. CONCLUSIONS: The findings highlight the need for interventions that aim to bridge the sociocultural gaps between providers and patients. Matching women and their providers on ethnolinguistic background may help to reduce disparities in care.Accepted manuscrip

Contraceptive use among uterine evacuation clients in Bangladesh: The role of individual, family, and service delivery factors

Background: Post-abortion contraception is recommended to reduce subsequent unwanted pregnancy and recourse to unsafe abortion, but little is known about the factors associated with successful post-abortion contraceptive use. Guided by the social-ecological model, this study seeks to understand the multiple levels of influence on women’s post-abortion contraceptive use. Methods: This dissertation uses data from a facility-based sample of 498 public sector uterine evacuation (UE) clients in Bangladesh. Respondents completed a quantitative interview on the day of their UE procedures and a follow-up interview four months later. Logistic regression models assess factors at the individual, family and UE service delivery levels associated with immediate post-abortion contraceptive acceptance (on the day of the UE procedure) and use four months post-abortion. Finally, intimate partner violence (IPV) is explored in greater depth to understand the intersection with other potential constraints to reproductive autonomy and the association between IPV and reproductive health outcomes. Results: Post-abortion contraceptive use was more common at the four-month follow-up (85.4%) compared to the day of the UE procedure (72.7%). Women receiving medication abortion (MA) and dilatation and curettage (D&C) had significantly lower odds of immediate acceptance, compared to women whose procedures were performed using manual vacuum aspiration (MVA) (AOR=0.07 and AOR=0.18, respectively). Though equally likely to be using modern contraception four months post-abortion, MA and D&C clients demonstrated delayed acceptance compared to MVA clients. Women whose fertility intentions were discordant from their husband/partner’s and those who experienced past year IPV were also more likely to have delayed acceptance, particularly if their husband/partner accompanied them for the UE procedure. Experience of IPV was associated with other domains of constrained reproductive autonomy and reproductive health outcomes such as selecting MA, compared to MVA (APR=2.38). Discussion: Use of post-abortion contraception is influenced by individual, family, and UE service delivery characteristics. The higher rate of modern contraceptive use four months post-abortion is encouraging, but also suggests gaps in immediate post-abortion contraceptive provision. Interventions are needed at multiple levels to ensure all women have access to confidential UE and post-abortion contraceptive services

Searching for climate change solutions in Newfoundland’s urban forests

Urban forests provide municipalities with a suite of benefits and services, and help mitigate the effects of climate change notably, serving to reduce the impact of local warming and urban heat island effects. The gradient of winter climates that exists on the island of Newfoundland (NL) provides a unique natural laboratory to investigate the influence of urban forest canopy cover on both winter and summer temperature changes, and assess the potential for the island to act as a model for future forest conditions throughout mainland Canada. Using this natural laboratory, we characterize the impact of NL urban forests on summer temperatures; however, microclimatic influences on winter appear to be dominated by other factors (e.g., wind exposure). Structural and ecological characteristics of urban forests changed throughout the urban ecosystem, influencing how closely different urban forest regions resemble natural forests, and amplifying the need for alternative indicators of ecological integrity that better reflect their sociocultural influences. This research provides important empirical findings on the relationship between urban forests and urban ecosystems in NL, highlighting the need for more intentional management and planning to ensure the longevity of urban forests and their benefits into the future

Informing Future Media Approaches: The Perspective of Paralympic Athletes

The purpose of this study was to examine how Paralympic athletes make meaning of discourses of disability within Paralympic media coverage. This involved semi-structured photo-elicitation interviews with eight Canadian Paralympic athletes. A reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyze the data utilizing Foucault’s notions of discourse, power and technologies of the self. The findings demonstrate that Paralympic athletes made meaning of the discourses of disability within Paralympic media coverage by drawing on their lived and media experiences. Athletes with more media experience articulated problematizations of dominant discourses of disability in Paralympic media coverage and engagement in technologies of the self. Knowledge generated from this study offers media personnel an informed understanding of how Paralympic athletes understand representations of disability and disability sport. This knowledge may offer insight and inform future media approaches of disability sport and the Paralympic Games

Talking Trailers: Promotional materials, and the value of the paratextual turn

In the last decade, the term ‘paratext’ has become increasingly popular and dominant in studies of promotional materials, applied to study a range of different media forms. Genette’s term appears in Coming Attractions: Reading American Movie Trailers (Kernan 2004), before being developed in Show Sold Separately (Gray 2010) and a special issue of Critical Studies in Media Communication (Brookey and Gray 2017). The latter issue states that ‘we know that paratexts walk amongst us’ and that paratextual analysis has advanced ‘a wide and impressive range of academic debates’ (ibid, 101), there has been little discussion about the use value of such a term for the broader work that exists around the production and reception of promotional materials (see, for example, Hesford and Johnston 2015; Johnston 2019). What follows is a discussion between three scholars whose work spans different aspects of promotional materials, to think through the advantages and limitations of the paratextual turn, and the future of this field

Antimicrobial Resistance and Zoonotic Outbreaks of Salmonella enterica in the United States, 2015–2018

The emergence of antimicrobial resistance worldwide has threatened the therapeutic viability of antimicrobial drugs. Non-typhoidal Salmonella enterica subspecies enterica sickens 1.2 million Americans annually and can be transmitted to people through food, water, animal contact and animal environments. This paper represents the first description of the epidemiology of multistate zoonotic outbreaks of non-typhoidal Salmonella in the US and their representative patterns of antimicrobial susceptibility and resistance of patient isolates. It evaluates the rate of concordance between traditional phenotypic and newer genotypic predicted antimicrobial resistance patterns to in the context of Salmonella surveillance and treatment in the US that rely on the cooperation between local, state and federal public health organizations. Given the complex public health challenges public health leaders are urged to take the role of chief health strategists by using transformational leadership and systems thinking to engage stakeholders in the One-Health effort to combat zoonotic salmonellosis and antimicrobial resistance.Master of Public Healt

The influence of genetic factors on brain plasticity and recovery after neural injury.

Purpose of reviewThe fields of clinical genetics and pharmacogenetics are rapidly expanding. Genetic factors have numerous associations with injury and with treatment effects in the setting of neural plasticity and recovery.Recent findingsEvidence is reviewed that established genetic variants, as well as some more recently described variants, are related to outcome after neural injury and in some cases are useful for predicting clinical course. In many cases, the interaction of genetics with clinical factors such as experience and therapy may be important. As an extension of this, genetic factors have been associated with differential response to a number of forms of therapy, including pharmacological, brain stimulation, psychotherapy, and meditation. Genetic variation might also have a significant effect on plasticity and recovery through key covariates such as depression or stress. A key point is that genetic associations might be most accurately identified when studied in relation to distinct forms of a disorder rather than in relation to broad clinical syndromes.SummaryUnderstanding genetic variation gives clinicians a biological signal that could be used to predict who is most likely to recover from neural injury, to choose the optimal treatment for a patient, or to supplement rehabilitation therapy