Rural, Cultural & Global Health: As Seen Through the Eyes of Doctoral Students at the University of New Mexico

When our early UNM College of Nursing PhD students wrote Volumes 1-3 of this compilation a decade ago, our program was new and growing, and most of the students lived here in New Mexico or in neighboring states. Much has changed since the initial volumes emerged from our course entitled Rural and Cultural Health (Nursing 611), a graduate elective. The world has embraced enormous linkages through technology. Refugee and migration patterns the world over have more people displaced and seeking a permanent home than ever before. International, national, regional and local contexts, conflicts, politics, health-related policies, economic struggles, racial/ethnic diversity, other kinds of human diversity, and all dimensions of health care have undergone tremendous change and continue to do so at a rapid pace. Students from our own and other universities now take this course online and contribute their insights and experience. Nursing 611 has evolved into an 8-week summer elective offered in even-numbered years, focused on three components of health care: global health, cultural health, and rural health. The students, who represent diversity in heritage, geographic location, and clinical/research interests, were asked to produce 3 briefs, or short papers (each 3-4 pages long), on the three components (global, cultural, and rural health). They were encouraged to write in an engaging style, even resembling the tone of a Ted Talk, to interest readers. This collection represents their focused writing in the three areas. We believe that the state of New Mexico holds unique cultures, characteristics, and problems, yet the health disparities, inequities, population trends, migration patterns, and general state of rural/cultural health the world over are more similar than different. Whatever your own disciplinary connections, we invite you to explore the critical issues presented in the following collection of short essays. In this class, we have defined both culture and rurality broadly and in multiple contexts. Much remains to be done, both locally and globally, to improve the health status of our varied populations and communities. Please join us in the analysis and resolution of the health challenges, inequities, and unresolved needs that characterize many rural and cultural settings.https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/rural-cultural-health/1005/thumbnail.jp

Genome Wide DNA Copy Number Analysis of Serous Type Ovarian Carcinomas Identifies Genetic Markers Predictive of Clinical Outcome

Ovarian cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer death in women. Ovarian cancers display a high degree of complex genetic alterations involving many oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes. Analysis of the association between genetic alterations and clinical endpoints such as survival will lead to improved patient management via genetic stratification of patients into clinically relevant subgroups. In this study, we aim to define subgroups of high-grade serous ovarian carcinomas that differ with respect to prognosis and overall survival. Genome-wide DNA copy number alterations (CNAs) were measured in 72 clinically annotated, high-grade serous tumors using high-resolution oligonucleotide arrays. Two clinically annotated, independent cohorts were used for validation. Unsupervised hierarchical clustering of copy number data derived from the 72 patient cohort resulted in two clusters with significant difference in progression free survival (PFS) and a marginal difference in overall survival (OS). GISTIC analysis of the two clusters identified altered regions unique to each cluster. Supervised clustering of two independent large cohorts of high-grade serous tumors using the classification scheme derived from the two initial clusters validated our results and identified 8 genomic regions that are distinctly different among the subgroups. These 8 regions map to 8p21.3, 8p23.2, 12p12.1, 17p11.2, 17p12, 19q12, 20q11.21 and 20q13.12; and harbor potential oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes that are likely to be involved in the pathogenesis of ovarian carcinoma. We have identified a set of genetic alterations that could be used for stratification of high-grade serous tumors into clinically relevant treatment subgroups