Characteristics of Medicaid Dental Providers Who Provide Oral Health Services to Pregnant Women in Virginia

Characteristics of Medicaid Dental Providers Who Provide Oral Health Services to Pregnant Women in Virginia Hasib Zaman, Depts. of Bioinformatics and Computer Science, with Dr. Shilipa Naavaal, VCU School of Dentistry Introduction: Medicaid is a federal program that provides health insurance for low-income adults, children, pregnant women, and elderly adults in the United States. Virginia expanded their Medicaid, both financially and demographically, in January 2019 and currently has 1,317,981 individuals enrolled in Medicaid, which is an increase of 39.7% from 2018; however, within this expansion, there was no increase in budget for dental Medicaid. Although there are programs, such as Smile for Children, that cater to the oral health of pregnant women, many women do not use the available opportunities due to limited awareness and accessibility of services, as well as cultural factors affecting the quality of service (e.g., linguistic differences). Furthermore, only 39% of dentists nationwide accept Medicaid and/or children\u27s health insurance, which not only discourages young families from seeking oral healthcare, but also limits their accessibility to these vital services. In order to clarify oral healthcare disparities for pregnant women, this study will explore the characteristics of providers who participate in Medicaid and provide oral health services to pregnant women in Virginia. Findings can inform policy focused on improving Medicaid participation among dental providers. Methods: The 2015-2018 Medicaid provider data was obtained through the State Department of Medical Assistance Services. The license numbers of each provider were collected using a public License Lookup tool available through the Virginia Department of Health Professions (VDHP). Additional provider characteristics (i.e., gender, age, years in practice, location) will be requested from the VDHP. Descriptive analysis is done to explore the characteristics of Medicaid providers, to map the distribution in the state of Virginia . Results: Analyses revealed that most providers were located in the Eastern and Northern regions of Virginia’s health districts (55%). These regions have the greatest number of providers that were involved in Medicaid, as it is a very suburban area containing a vast variety of demographics. Following these regions, there are approximately 11% of the providers in the Central region. Furthermore, the Northwest and Southwest regions combined to make up for approximately 34% of providers. Further analysis will be conducted in order to determine the socio demographic context of the providers within these regions. Discussions: During pregnancy, there is an increase in hormones that can affect one’s body’s response to plaque which can lead to increased tooth decay or gum disease. Therefore, there is a need to improve dental providers\u27 participation in Medicaid to improve oral health services among pregnant women. These results have implications for workforce growth and development. Our study results suggest disparities in the distribution of dental providers by various characteristics. Findings provide an overview of the distribution of Medicaid, oral health providers throughout Virginia, with a particular concentration in the Northern region. Additionally, with regions such as Eastern and Northwestern that have a higher percentile of women that do not speak English fluently while having more providers that tend to be caucasian , there are demographic barriers between the two parties that inhibit women from seeking services.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/uresposters/1339/thumbnail.jp

An Efficient Genetic Algorithm for Discovering Diverse-Frequent Patterns

Working with exhaustive search on large dataset is infeasible for several reasons. Recently, developed techniques that made pattern set mining feasible by a general solver with long execution time that supports heuristic search and are limited to small datasets only. In this paper, we investigate an approach which aims to find diverse set of patterns using genetic algorithm to mine diverse frequent patterns. We propose a fast heuristic search algorithm that outperforms state-of-the-art methods on a standard set of benchmarks and capable to produce satisfactory results within a short period of time. Our proposed algorithm uses a relative encoding scheme for the patterns and an effective twin removal technique to ensure diversity throughout the search.Comment: 2015 International Conference on Electrical Engineering and Information Communication Technology (ICEEICT

Revitalisasi Implementasi Pendidikan Karakter Berbasis Daya Inovasi Guru dalam Rangka Meningkatkan Daya Saing Bangsa

Fenomena kehidupan global berupa Speed, Conectivity, Intangable, dan Compatibility, telah menciptakan terjadinya persaingan antar bangsa yang semakin ketat. Sedangkan kondisi obyektif sumberdaya manusia Indonesia dewasa ini berada pada posisi yang cukup memprihatinkan jika dibandingkan dengan negara lain. Kondisi ini mendorong dilaksanakannya pendidikan karakter yang kuat bagi bangsa Indonesia sehingga mampu bersaing dalam kehidupan global. Oleh karena itu kebijakan pendididikan diarahkan pada pembangunan manusia seutuhnya untuk membentuk karakter bangsa kuat dan berdaya saing global. Permasalahan dalam kajian ini adalah bagaimana implementasi pendidikan karakter bangsa berbasis daya inovasi guru? Adapun tujuan dari pembahasan permasalahan ini adalah untuk mendeskripsikan implementsi pendidikan karakter bangsa bersasis daya inovasi guru. Hasil pembahasan menggambarkan bahwa implementasi pendidikan karakter bangsa diarahkan pada tertanamnya nilai-nilai luhur secara massive pada setiap individu bangsa Indonesia yang tercermin pada cara berfikir, bersikap dan berperilaku. Setrategi pendidikan karakter bangsa dilaksanakan melalui jalur pendidikan keluarga, jalur pendidikan luar sekolah dan jalur sekolah. Guru menjadi kunci utama dalam implementasi pendidikan karakter bangsa melalui jalur sekolah. Implementasi pendidikan karakter bangsa dilakukan secara terintergrasi dalam proses pembelajaran pada setiap mata pelajaran baik bersifat intra kurikuler maupun ekstra kurikuler. Revitalisasi implementasi pendidikan karakter bangsa oleh guru dilakukan dengan meningkatkan daya inovasi yang berbasis teknologi informasi. Penggunaan teknologi informasi dalam implementasi pendidikan karakter bangsa akan meningkatkan wawasan dan kompetensi global dan pada akhirnya diharapkan dapat menghasilkan lulusan berdaya saing global. Kesimpulan bahwa implementasi pendidikan karakter bangsa diarahkan untuk menanamkan nilai-nilai luhur bangsa secara massive, oleh guru dengan daya inovasi tinggi dengan berbasis pada teknologi informas

Powder removal from Ti-6Al-4V cellular structures fabricated via electron beam melting

Direct metal fabrication systems like electron beam melting (EBM) and direct metal laser sintering (also called selective laser melting) are gaining popularity. One reason is the design and fabrication freedom that these technologies offer over traditional processes. One specific feature that is of interest is mesh or lattice structures that can be produced using these powder-bed systems. One issue with the EBM process is that the powder trapped within the structure during the fabrication process is sintered and can be hard to remove as the mesh density increases. This is usually not an issue for the laser-based systems since most of them work at a low temperature and the sintering of the powder is less of an issue. Within the scope of this project, a chemical etching process was evaluated for sintered powder removal using three different cellular structures with varying mesh densities. All meshes were fabricated via EBM using Ti6Al4V Footnote Information powder. The results are promising, but the larger the structures, the more difficult it is to completely remove the sintered powder without affecting the integrity of the mesh structure