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Trends in Prenatal Care Utilization, 2014-2022: The Role of Race and Ethnicity
Get PDFThe United States has made significant advancements in healthcare, yet maternal mortality rates continue to rise, with pronounced racial and ethnic disparities in prenatal care (PNC) utilization. The current study examines PNC trends from 2014 to 2022 using data from the CDC WONDER Natality database, focusing on disparities across racial and ethnic groups and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings reveal a concerning decline in PNC utilization, with average visits decreasing from 11.24 in 2014 to 10.96 in 2022. Persistent racial disparities are evident, as Non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic women consistently receive fewer PNC visits compared to Non-Hispanic White women. Multiracial, Hispanic, and Asian women also experience declines in PNC visits, dropping from approximately 9.5 visits in 2014 to 9.0 in 2022. Black women saw a similar decrease, from about 9.0 visits in 2014 to 8.6 in 2022. Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) women face the most severe inequities, with average visits declining from around 7.5 in 2014 to below 7 in 2022. The COVID-19 pandemic further disrupted PNC access, exacerbating existing disparities. While telehealth emerged as a critical alternative, its adoption was uneven across demographics. Hispanic, Asian, and Indigenous women reported increased telehealth use, but systemic inequities persisted, with Black and Hispanic mothers missing more prenatal visits compared to their White counterparts. These findings underscore the urgent need for targeted policy interventions to address structural barriers to PNC access. Recommendations include expanding insurance coverage, enhancing telehealth infrastructure, addressing transportation challenges, and promoting culturally competent care. By highlighting these disparities over time, this study provides actionable insights for reducing preventable maternal mortality and advancing health equity across diverse demographic groups in the U.S
Sleight of Hand
No full textSexual assault disproportionately effects queer and trans people, many of whom will suffer it more than once. As a way to describe the impact of that on this individual and their trans community, I\u27ve taken an all-sides approach, using techniques from memoir, poetic tradition, translation, and linguistic philosophy. This should be a disorienting experience for a reader, but not an ungrounded one. Structurally, I\u27ve paired prose with poetry in sequence to give some stability, and broken this sequence into sections. The formal inventiveness is explicitly addressed throughout to make the thinking clearer and to disrupt a reader\u27s sense of immersion at times. In doing so, this text demands that a reader participate in creating meaning from it and place that meaning in context, in the world outside the book. Framing the text variously as a stage performance, as a magic trick, as a translation, as a metaphor, works to place the reader in explicit and chaotic relation to the instability of language with respect to sexual assault. The text initially explores themes like prey animals, early sexual experiences, embodied trauma, and etymology, then moves to formal translations, historical reviews of sex and trauma studies, and contemporary media in which rape appears. Throughout these first two sections, characters begin to appear in bits and pieces, people from my community who were involved, who were my friends, my assailants, my loved ones. Finally, the text ends in a more linear narrative around the changing relationships in my trans community and what happened after I was assaulted, how language held a possible line of flight out of the violent ways we\u27d been entangled. A sort of coda charges the reader with the task of radically altering their own relationships, communities, and teachings to enact on the world what I hope I have enacted in my own life and in this book, and ends on a poem
Integrating Data Analytics: Exploring the Best Methods To Evaluate Players’ Performance To Help Gain A Competitive Advantage On The Football Field
Get PDFTo succeed in the world of sports, leaders need to uncover and utilize any advantage possible in order to gain a competitive advantage over their competition. I discuss how leaders of a sports organization, specifically within the Arkansas Razorback football program, implement the use of analytics on and off the field, as well as how they use their data to create visuals, find potential strengths and weakness, and ultimately help them be more prepared for gameday. Using my personal experience as a Student Analyst for the Razorbacks, along with supplementary information, I share the latest tactics and the strategies for how sports teams measure and track performance in order to get the most out of their program
The Rural Rescue: Tackling Arkansas’s Legal Deserts Through Proven Statutory Reform
Get PDFIn some rural counties of Arkansas, a single attorney is responsible for serving thousands of residents, depriving many Arkansans of even basic legal representation. Imagine facing eviction, fighting for custody of your child, contesting a divorce, or navigating the complexities of probate with no attorney for miles. This stark reality exemplifies the growing “legal deserts” problem facing rural Arkansas, where access to justice has become a luxury rather than a right. To combat the growing shortage of legal professionals in rural areas, states seek new solutions—some proving more successful than others. Several states have implemented rural attorney incentive programs, typically managed by their respective judicial branches or bar associations. Such programs, alongside scholarships, fellowships, and incubator projects, aim to attract and retain lawyers in underserved, rural communities. This Note examines the ongoing rural legal desert crisis in Arkansas and proposes that the state adapt its rural physician recruitment program to increase the presence of Arkansas lawyers in rural communities. It also considers how Arkansas can implement elements from other states’ successful incentive programs for rural attorneys to further enhance efforts to address its legal deserts problem. Section II seeks to provide background on Arkansas’s legal landscape, compare rural attorney incentive programs from other states, and explore the state’s rural practice incentive model for physicians. Section III suggests a solution, proposing that Arkansas adapt its statutory rural physician program to create a parallel model for attorneys, while also addressing potential implementation barriers. Section IV concludes with a call to action, urging Arkansas lawmakers and the legal community to explore the proposed solution and expand access to justice in rural areas
Perceived Obligations of Older Partners in Living-Apart Together Relationships
Get PDFOlder and middle-aged adults are increasingly in Living-Apart-Together (LAT) relationships characterized by committed romantic relationships without marriage and cohabitation. Because of assumptions that older adults will receive family caregiving as they grow older and need caregiving, it is not clear how people are likely to perceive obligations to provide caregiving assistance. As adults move into old age and incidence rates of Alzheimer’s Disease or Related Dementia (ADRD) increase, questions about the availability of family members to provide needed assistance are complicated by LAT relationships. The purpose of this study was to examine perceived obligations to provide assistance to older adults living with dementia, specifically focusing on LAT relationships. It is hypothesized that contextual micro-level factors will be related to perceived obligations to provide caregiving, including (1) sex of the person needing versus providing care, (2) marital status (married or LAT), (3) approval of adult children, (4) recent sexual intimacy, and (5) reasons for marital dissolution (divorce or widowhood). It was also hypothesized that cultural values would predict heterogeneity in perceived obligations to assist older persons experiencing symptoms of dementia, including (1) individualism, (2) familism, and (3) religiosity. In this study, the perceived obligations of older adult partners in LAT relationships were evaluated. The findings suggest that the marital status of the vignette couple significantly impacts the perceived obligation of the vignette partner to provide physical and financial assistance
Swarm 3D Printing Platform
Get PDFA system that uses autonomous robots for 3D manufacturing an object where the robots have different tool heads for performing different manufacturing operations
Identifying Best Practices in Small Business Meetings: An Importance-Performance Gap Analysis
No full textMeetings are crucial for small businesses, yet many struggle to plan them effectively due to limited resources. This study examines the gap between the perceived importance and actual performance of 14 meeting planning attributes in small businesses. Through an online survey and Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA), the study finds that attributes such as setting SMART goals and having employees arrive on time and engage before meetings are highly valued but underperformed. The study also emphasizes the importance of leadership, communication, and technology skills for successful meeting planning. The 5 Ps framework (Purpose, Participants, Planning, Participation, Perspective) is studied to evaluate the effectiveness of these meeting attributes. The results indicate that purpose, participants, participation, and perspective are well-executed, while planning requires improvement. These findings provide valuable insights on how small businesses can enhance meeting effectiveness despite limited resources
Understanding factors that drive wildlife mortality during prescribed fire management of prairie restorations
Get PDFFire is a key ecological disturbance, which plays a vital role in maintaining biodiversity and early successional species. For today’s land managers, prescribed fire is key in the restoration and maintenance of prairie ecosystems, halting woody encroachment and creating habitat desperately needed by many species. However, fire may have unintended effects on wildlife populations through direct mortality. Among taxa living in fire-dependent ecosystems, reptiles are predisposed to direct mortality, and several studies have recorded significant mortality during prescribed burns. However, the few studies investigating reptile mortality in prescribed fire are limited by small sample sizes and generally have limited analysis of environmental variables and spatial distribution. Consequently, my objective was to investigate factors driving reptile mortality in prescribed fire. To do this, I 1) correlated environmental characteristics, wind speed, soil temperature, and air temperature with snake mortality using a long-term data set of collected over the course of 10 years at prairie restoration sites in Northwest Arkansas, 2) investigated how different categories of snake habitat may differ in fire severity, which has significant implications for wildlife mortality, and 3) georeferenced and analyzed the distribution of snake mortalities through clustering and zonal analysis. We found a significant correlation between snake mortality and minimum temperature preceding the burn, as well as significant clustering of mortalities around prairie mounds. These findings will help implement prescribed fire in ways that minimize negative direct impacts to wildlife populations
Did The Youth Hiring Act of 2023 Impact Wages In Arkansas?
Get PDFSome believe Arkansas Act 195 may create more problems than it looks to solve; the paper sets out to find if Arkansas is experiencing any benefits from the passing of the law. This paper is an economic analysis of Arkansas Act 195 of 2023 (The Youth Hiring Act of 2023), which removed a work permit requirement for fourteen and fifteen year olds. The paper also observes data from Iowa since the state passed a similar policy. Using Bureau of Labor Statistics data on waiters, fast food workers, cashiers, and bartenders from 2017 to 2023 in Iowa and Arkansas, it performs a regression analysis on the occupational mean annual wage. To contextualize the data, it uses United States Census Bureau Data and touches on a brief history of labor laws in Arkansas and nationwide. This is a pilot study that looks to start a conversation about the economic impact of Act 195
Efficacy of Mitophagy Inhibition as a Potentiating Agent for Conventional Chemotherapy
Get PDFCancer is a result of uncontrolled growth and reproduction of cells. Damaged or abnormal cells grow and multiply when they should not and in turn the cells continue to proliferate and metastasize. Malignant cells rely on functional mitochondria for proliferation, metastasis, and survival. These mitochondria maintain a functional mitochondrial network through a quality control mechanism called mitophagy. Mitophagy is a conserved intracellular process to maintain quality control and remove damaged mitochondria.
Previous research has been done to examine the effects of mitophagy in tumor cells, as well as the effects of mitophagy inhibition. One focus of current research has been to examine the effects of chemosensitivity while inhibiting mitochondrial mitophagy. Chemotherapy resistance has been shown to be a major challenge in cancer therapy. Chemotherapeutic agents typically induce mitochondrial dysfunction with an increase in ROS generation. Chemotherapy increases mitophagy in order to exacerbate cytotoxic effects on cancer cells because excessive mitophagy induction can lead to loss of functional mitochondria and in turn, lead to cell death. Inhibition of mitophagy may help downregulate the resistance of drugs and chemotherapy in cancer cells. The microenvironment plays a role in mitophagy activation and levels of mitophagy.
The goal of this project is to examine the effects of mitophagy inhibition within two murine cancer cell lines during chemotherapy. More specifically, this project will test the mitophagy inhibitor, Liensinine, in combination with a chemotherapy agent, 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) in two cancer cell lines to determine its effect on mitophagy. The goal is to determine how these strategies and methods affect mitophagy levels, along with chemosensitivity and ROS levels