In Any Language: Improving the Quality and Availability of Language Services in Hospitals

Showcases initiatives and interventions implemented in ten hospitals participating in RWJF's Speaking Together initiative to measure and enhance language services delivery. Discusses factors for success, strategies for improvement, and lessons learned

Agent Communication in Multi-Agent Models of Information Cascades

Understanding how information is transmitted and how an information cascade is formed has many applications both in understanding political and economic behavior and how to best implement economic and public policies. Many papers have shown that information cascades do occur, but they always describe a very basic situation that does not occur often in the real world. To further understand information cascades in more complex conditions, I extended a multi agent simulation model that set out to investigate information cascades in the motion picture industry. I extended the model by allowing agents to speak to other agents before making a movie viewing choice. By allowing agents to communicate, the agents were more effective in choosing high quality movies. How the information cascade presented itself altered with the agent communication. Information cascade occurred in the information the agents transmitted to one another. This resulted in the agents choices focusing their movie choices over a smaller number of movies. This result shows that given a large variety of choices where many are good choices, cascading on a single choice becomes more difficult

How To Easily Adopt A Plant-Based Diet For Weight Loss And Health Promotion

The Healthy Defaults How-To Pamphlet is intended to provide guidance and healthy defaults to assist individuals in adopting a plant-based diet. Tips on how to transition, save time in the kitchen, plant-based swaps, how to set up a power plate, omit oil when cooking and resources such as phone applications for meal plans and recipes, books and documentaries will be discussed.https://dune.une.edu/an_studedres/1051/thumbnail.jp

Improving Hepatitis C Virus Screening Through Bundle Interventions

Abstract Hepatitis C (HCV) is estimated to impact 57,500 people in the US and is a leading infectious disease worldwide. The purpose of this DNP Project is to increase provider confidence in screening, early detection rates and ultimately timely treatment for patients at risk for HCV served within a rural Federal Qualified Health center (FQHC). Interventions for this project included bundle steps consisting of provider and staff training of Hepatitis C guidelines for screening, use of an Electronic Medical Records (EMR) HCV flowsheet and lab template, revision of preventative health form, and self-efficacy survey to evaluate provider and nursing confidence in HCV screening and care. Paired t-tests were conducted to evaluate the impact on bundle interventions on care providers and staff overall knowledge, confidence and referral practices among providers caring for patients at risk for HCV. The project data analysis reflects an extreme statistically significant difference between both pre and post survey variables t (14) =5.152 p = 0.0001, 95% CI (-10.39, -4.28). Pre intervention self-efficacy score (n=15, with mean value 20.133) and Post scores (n=15, with mean value 27.47). Findings from the project reflect the importance of staff and provider training and the use of effective strategies to importance HCV screening uptake and referrals

Nutrition Labeling Laws For Food And Supplements Timeline

The Nutrition Labeling Laws for Food and Supplements Timeline is intended to give a brief history of nutrition labeling laws for food and supplements in the U.S. from 1906 to 2016. The timeline includes pertinent laws, amendments, and important historical landmarks that have made an impact on how nutritional knowledge and supplements are promoted, distributed, or created in the U.S. Each historical mark includes a short description to explain its significance and highlights the date it occurred.https://dune.une.edu/an_studedres/1091/thumbnail.jp

The presence of tranquil sounds in relation to augmented focus and concentration

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if the presence of tranquil sounds created augmented focus and concentration among undergraduate college students, who prefer silent learning environments. Participants were randomly selected from an undergraduate pool of students from a northeastern college in the United States. Student\u27s focus and concentration was assessed using the Personal Emotion Survey and Personal Habits Survey. The Mann-Whitney test was used to compare the scores of those who prefer silent or prefer sounds in the environment to their scores on the Personal Emotional Survey. As we have found from past studies, music plays an important role in emotions, verbal abilities and educational benefits for disabled individuals. Since research is limited in the area of focus and concentration, the present study used implications from previous research to fill the gaps in past research. The results showed statistical significance within group four, in which participants who preferred sounds indicated feeling more focused while in the silent group

Birth matters: discourses of childbirth in contemporary American culture

In this project, I use a rhetorical-cultural approach to examine the multiple and often-contradictory messages circulating in contemporary American culture about the event of childbirth. Though many feminist scholars have shown how professional obstetrics’ view of physiological birth shapes medical practice and women’s experiences in hospitals, few have asked what the American public is learning about birth outside of the hospital, or why that knowledge might matter. In order to fill that gap, I trace a dominant narrative that positions institutionalized biomedical knowledge and technology as the exclusive producers of health and safety for birthing women and their babies in popular film and television, in the making of medical research and policy, and in the way the insurance industry frames women as consumers or recipients. I argue that it is not just in the delivery room that this ideology gets communicated, nor are birthing women the only ones affected by its messages. Rather, my analysis illustrates how this narrative has seeped into the fabric of how American society as a whole understands and engages with medicine, women’s bodies, and science. In the final chapter, in order to explore a growing resistance to this ideology, I turn to the discursive construction of birth in online media. Read alongside the mainstream narrative, the rhetoric in these online spaces illustrates how the stakes of this debate are not just about who gets to decide where and how women should have their babies, but ultimately over who gets to interpret and apply science. The battle over birth in this country is, as this dissertation shows, also a battle over the public’s understanding of institutionalized medicine’s exclusive claims to scientific knowledge. By exposing the ways that narratives about and within that system function to sustain it, and illuminating the ways that the organizing power of new media is generating resistance to that system, this project seeks to intervene in conversations about the cultural meanings of childbirth, about meaningful and ethical health care, and, ultimately, about the production and circulation of knowledge about science, medicine, and women’s bodies

The Anxiolytic Effects of Self-Selected Music Among Primary Care Patients

The primary care setting is commonly referred to as the first line of medical treatment sought for health related services. Anxiety is one of the most frequently encountered mental health issues in primary care. The purpose of this study was to examine the level of state anxiety experienced among primary care patients, attending for routine and nonroutine appointments; its further purpose was to examine if self-selected relaxing music accounts for the greatest reductions in state anxiety among primary care patients, as compared with investigator-selected (classical) music, audio commercials, or no music. Patients included a primarily underserved primary care population between the ages of 19 and 76, attending for scheduled examinations at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine Family Medicine Center. Patients were given self-report measures, which included demographic questions and measures of state anxiety, trait anxiety, musical preference, and satisfaction. The hypotheses for this study included: (1) patients attending for routine appointments will experience state anxiety, with those attending for nonroutine appointments experiencing the most significant levels and (2) self-selected music will account for the greatest reductions in state anxiety, when compared with the other group conditions. The results indicate that there were no significant differences in primary care patients’ levels of pre-state anxiety, whether they attended for routine or for non-routine appointments. The group conditions revealed that no significant mean differences exist on levels of post-state anxiety among the group conditions. Future research should continue to examine the anxiolytic effects of self-selected music among medical populations