The Commit to be Well Program: An Effective Worksite Wellness Program

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Description
Health and wellness coaching has shown promising results in numerous studies. However, there is lack of published research evaluating the impact of using wellness-coaching interventions implemented by coaching trainees in a worksite setting. The main objective was to examine the

Health and wellness coaching has shown promising results in numerous studies. However, there is lack of published research evaluating the impact of using wellness-coaching interventions implemented by coaching trainees in a worksite setting. The main objective was to examine the changes in self-reported scores of the 12-wellness dimensions of health in ASU students, faculty, and staff after participating in an eight-week health and wellness program. The secondary outcome was to evaluate if additional health and wellness recommendations had a significant impact. The participants were aged 18 to 58 years and were divided into two groups: the first group received health and wellness coaching, while the second group received the health and wellness coaching in addition to recommendations on specific worksite social/embedded programs and supporting activities. Both groups had significantly increased scores in Eating/Nutrition and Thinking (p<0.001 and P<0.014 respectively). Health and wellness coaching trainees were effective in assisting clients on reaching realistic progress. Our program shows potential benefits in worksite wellness.
Date Created
2017-12
Agent

Identifying Barriers to Care Coordination for Children with Special Health Care Needs: the Provider Perspective Comparing Physical & Behavioral Disability

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Description
The term "Children with Special Health Care Needs," often abbreviated as CSHCN, is an umbrella term, encompassing a wide variety of children with a range of health conditions. As of 2011, CSHCN constituted 15-20% of all children age 0-17 in

The term "Children with Special Health Care Needs," often abbreviated as CSHCN, is an umbrella term, encompassing a wide variety of children with a range of health conditions. As of 2011, CSHCN constituted 15-20% of all children age 0-17 in the United States (Bethell et al., 2013). Despite this, CSHCN "account for 80% of all pediatric medical expenses." (Hardy, Vivier, Rivara, & Melzer, 2012). This project specifically compares children with physical disability and behavioral disability in hopes of gaining a greater insight into both groups, assessing/comparing differences, and evaluating whether or not having a co-morbidity has a mediating or contending effect on care coordination.
Date Created
2017-12
Agent

Barriers to Healthcare Access within Native American Populations

Description
Introduction: Health disparities for the Native American population in the United States have been well documented for years. Native Americans face many barriers to healthcare access, including low socioeconomic status, historical trauma, and lack of access to healthcare facilities. Barriers

Introduction: Health disparities for the Native American population in the United States have been well documented for years. Native Americans face many barriers to healthcare access, including low socioeconomic status, historical trauma, and lack of access to healthcare facilities. Barriers to healthcare and challenges associated with achieving optimal health among Native Americans contribute to health disparities within these populations. If these barriers are to be overcome, they must be understood and addressed. Purpose: The purpose of this review was to identify barriers to healthcare access for Native American populations as well as strategies to address barriers. Method: A preliminary scan of several online databases was conducted. Key terms used in the search included American Indians, Native American, healthcare, healthcare access, health disparities, barriers, and intervention. Articles were selected based on relevance, and data from each chosen article were extracted and categorized. Results: The initial search resulted in 272 articles of potential interest. Based on the abstract review, 32 were deemed relevant, and full text reviews were completed. Based on the full text review, an additional 10 articles were excluded, resulting in a final review of 22 articles. The articles addressed barriers related to various health conditions: cancer treatment, drug or alcohol use, maternal and child health, historical trauma, diabetes and chronic illnesses, and oral health. Conclusion: Native Americans face several barriers to healthcare access that are associated with social, physical, and mental health disparities. Successful efforts to address these barriers include patient-centered, culturally-competent interventions. Others include interventions which focus on community involvement.
Date Created
2017-12
Agent

Connecting to the Community: A Needs Assessment of Families and Early Childhood Professionals

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Description
The Paradise Valley Family Resource Center (PVFRC) is a not for profit, community based organization funded by First Things First and a part of the Paradise Valley Unified School District (PVUSD) in Phoenix, Arizona. The mission of this organization is

The Paradise Valley Family Resource Center (PVFRC) is a not for profit, community based organization funded by First Things First and a part of the Paradise Valley Unified School District (PVUSD) in Phoenix, Arizona. The mission of this organization is to connect and strengthen families with children from birth to five years old in the Phoenix valley. The PVFRC longed to be more cognizant of what the needs of the community they serve are, and how they, as an organization, can administer programs of value to the community. Hence, the PVFRC entered a partnership with the Community Action Research Experiences (CARE) program at Arizona State University to develop a research proposal to improve their effectiveness and efficiency at achieving their mission. The purpose of this research project was to identify and evaluate the needs of the families with children ages birth to five within the community, to improve upon existing programs and services or to implement new programs, and to discover more effective modes of awareness and advertisement to the community about the programs and services the PVFRC provides. The main research questions of the experiment included asking participants about what programs and services they need, wish, or want to exist at the PVFRC, what barriers or gaps they see or experience regarding attending the PVFRC, how did participants learn about the PVFRC, and what are the best ways to contact families in their community. The methods of the research included conducting focus group interviews with families who utilize the programs and services at the PVFRC and with early childhood professionals in the Paradise Valley Unified School District (PVUSD), which included social workers and preschool teachers. A total of 25 participants were interviewed (10 families, 6 social workers, and 9 preschool teachers) and responses from the interviews were coded by the researcher. The results of the research was that the PVFRC is meeting many needs and current families are satisfied, participants desire some changes to current programs and services, and the best modes of advertisement and awareness were "word of mouth" and the internet. It was recommended that in order to better achieve their mission, it is advised that the PVFRC make appropriate changes to programs and services as suggested by the participants, connect with mom's or parents groups in the community, collaborate with preschool teachers on the front line, and increase their online presence through the use of social media and their website.
Date Created
2016-05
Agent

Creating a Non-Profit: Coping with the Loss of a Child

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Description
Grief reaches across all human differences and boundaries. Grief, when it does not resolve on its own, is known as complicated grief. Parents of children who die are at increased risk for experiencing complicated grief. This case study seeks commonalities

Grief reaches across all human differences and boundaries. Grief, when it does not resolve on its own, is known as complicated grief. Parents of children who die are at increased risk for experiencing complicated grief. This case study seeks commonalities and possible contributing factors for the creation of a non-profit in reaction to the death of a child. This study finds that previous achievements such as completing a marathon or graduating from a graduate program may indicate the presence of characteristics like resilience that result in the creation of a non-profit.
Date Created
2016-12
Agent

Contributing Factors to the Patient Burden of Work

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Description
Patients face tremendous challenges when attempting to navigate the United States health care system. This difficulty to navigate the system creates a burden that is placed on the patient and caregiver, in turn affecting the health outcomes of the patient,

Patients face tremendous challenges when attempting to navigate the United States health care system. This difficulty to navigate the system creates a burden that is placed on the patient and caregiver, in turn affecting the health outcomes of the patient, resulting in higher health care costs, less than desirable outcomes, and a large strain on the patient and caregiver's daily lives. There are several ways that people have tried to create a comprehensive theoretical framework to understand the system from multiple perspectives. This work will expand existing theoretical frameworks that observes the relationship between the patient, their social networks, and health care services such as the Burden of Treatment Theory. Consisting of a comprehensive, multidisciplinary literature review, research was derived from the disciplines of medicine, informatics, management, and ethics. In this paper, I attempt to identify key contributing factors and then develop and categorize these stressors into a typology. Since there are many contributing factors that affect the burden of work at multiple levels, a nested typology will be used which will link micro- and macro-leveled pressures to a single system while also showcasing how each level interacts and is influenced by the others. For the categorization of the contributing factors, they will be sorted into individual actors, organizational level, and macro-level factors. The implications of this work suggest that a combination of historical shifts, structural design, and secondary effects of policy contribute to patients' burden of work.
Date Created
2017-05
Agent

Implicit Racial/Ethnic Bias and Latino Health: A Systematic Review

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Description
In the United States, the Latino population is projected to reach approximately 28.6% of the total U.S. population by 2060. Despite their growing presence, Latinos encounter health disparities and worse health outcomes in comparison to their non-Hispanic White (NHW) counterparts.

In the United States, the Latino population is projected to reach approximately 28.6% of the total U.S. population by 2060. Despite their growing presence, Latinos encounter health disparities and worse health outcomes in comparison to their non-Hispanic White (NHW) counterparts. Latinos/ Hispanics have a higher prevalence of diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and late stage cancer diagnosis. Various social determinants of health (SDoH) such as socioeconomic status, education, insurance enrollment, language proficiency, immigration status among other variables intersect to influence Latino health status. However, even when all those factors were held equal, disparities remained. The aforementioned list did not include race/ethnicity, though race/ethnicity is a critical SDoH that influences one's access to care and the quality of care they receive. As such, examining the role of race may be the key to reducing persistent health disparities in access to care, quality of care, and health outcomes.
Date Created
2017-12
Agent

Conflict of Interest and Medical Devices: Investigating the Relationship between Physicians and the Medical Device Industry

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Description
In a world in which technologies proliferate at a rapid rate, it is no surprise that the medical device industry has grown in leaps and bounds. This surge in medical technology, especially implantable medical technology, has altered the modern operating

In a world in which technologies proliferate at a rapid rate, it is no surprise that the medical device industry has grown in leaps and bounds. This surge in medical technology, especially implantable medical technology, has altered the modern operating room, transforming surgery from a technique-driven activity into a technology-driven profession. This reliance upon technologies has fostered close ties between physicians and the medical device industry and within this relationship, medical device representatives play an integral role. This paper will investigate the relationship that exists between physicians and the medical device industry along with the potential conflicts of interest that may result due to this relationship. I will focus in particular on orthopedic medical devices due to media attention as a result of a 2007 Department of Justice settlement involving the leading orthopedic companies. This case proved instrumental in highlighting previously unknown instances in which conflicts of interest were occurring in the medical device industry.
Date Created
2014-05
Agent

Understanding the Impact of Phytoestrogens on Memory & the Cholinergic System

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Description
Menopause is reproductive senescence characterized by a loss of ovarian estrogen and progesterone. Women can experience cognitive decline and other negative symptoms with the loss of ovarian hormones (Sherwin, 2006). While hormone therapies (HT) can treat symptoms of menopause and

Menopause is reproductive senescence characterized by a loss of ovarian estrogen and progesterone. Women can experience cognitive decline and other negative symptoms with the loss of ovarian hormones (Sherwin, 2006). While hormone therapies (HT) can treat symptoms of menopause and may have neuroprotective properties, such as the potential to decrease the risk of Alzheimer's Disease (Behl & Manthey, 2000), there are many effects of current HTs that are not ideal. Indeed, optimizing conventional HTs has proven complex, indicating a need for alternative therapies. Phytoestrogens are estrogenic compounds found naturally in plants such as soybeans, that could provide new treatment options. Dietary phytoestrogens can benefit memory in the rodent model (Luine, 2006), although the mechanism underlying these effects is unclear. Basal forebrain cholinergic projections have been shown to mediate the cognitive benefits of estrogen (Gibbs, 2010); we hypothesize that phytoestrogens act similarly, via the cholinergic system, to impact memory. We administered varying doses of phytoestrogen-containing diets to ovariectomized female rats, and used the place recognition task to evaluate spatial memory. Brains were then analyzed for choline acetyltransferase (ChAT), the synthesizing enzyme for acetylcholine, in the vertical-diagonal bands (VDB) and the medial septum (MS) of the basal forebrain. Results showed that ChAT cell counts in the VDB were marginally higher with dietary phytoestrogen treatment. Further, VDB ChAT cell counts positively correlated with place recognition performance, indicating that animals with more VDB ChAT neurons exhibited better spatial memory performance. These results suggest that phytoestrogens might act similarly to natural, endogenously circulating estrogens, and identify phytoestrogens as a direction for investigation as a HT.
Date Created
2014-05
Agent

Clinical Decision Aids: An Investigation of the Necessity of Patient Education Platforms that Incorporate Health Literacy

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Description
Considering the overwhelming prevalence of BPH, how can it best be managed in light of the aging population? The purpose of this investigation is to illustrate that BPH and LUTS are conditions that are highly conducive to health literacy technology

Considering the overwhelming prevalence of BPH, how can it best be managed in light of the aging population? The purpose of this investigation is to illustrate that BPH and LUTS are conditions that are highly conducive to health literacy technology interventions. This objective will be met by: a) Providing an overview of the clinically relevant information regarding BPH, including anatomy, physiology, epidemiology, symptoms, and medical treatment for the disease; b) Establishing the necessity for novel health care delivery solutions by identifying past successes and challenges associated with technologic advances in related fields; c) Providing evidence of a lack of a systematic approach to BPH education, especially as it relates to health literacy. The relative successes and failures of previously established clinical decision aids will be discussed, leading to recommendations on how to improve upon these standards. Finally, the procedures and results of a pilot study will be analyzed in an effort to further highlight the necessity of engaging patients in the clinical decision making process.
Date Created
2014-12