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Final Post

Over the past semester, this course has helped me learn a great deal about health and healthcare. I feel that I was already proficient in the research and argumentative writing process, this class did help me to improve my efficiency in both the research and essay drafting process. In addition, peer editing and private conferences with the professor were both extremely helpful tools for improving my work. The blogging assignment was helpful for organizing my thoughts and understanding where I am at in the drafting process. I would recommend that future students use the blog as an opportunity to reflect and analyze exactly what other work they need to do on their draft. However, I think that my biggest take away from this class was the information that I learned while researching. I am majoring in Biomedical Engineering and hoping to attend medical school, so understanding healthcare is extremely important for my future career. During my research, I learned a great deal of specific info...
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Writing Project Four Post 2

One of the most helpful sources that I find in my research was a journal article titled "Healthcare Needs of U.S. Rural Latinos: A Growing, Multicultural Population." I found this source doing a keyword search on google scholar. This source will be extremely helpful as it provides information on the exact population that I will be focusing on for my paper. It gives data on population changes in this cultural group, health issues that they face, and current solutions to them, all of which will be important in this paper. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8386766/ 
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Writing Project Four Post #1

 For this essay, I chose to focus on rural Americans. This group faces a wide variety of healthcare disparities that vary widely by region and demographic. An obvious difficulty that rural Americans face regarding health care is the sheer distance that many live from the nearest health care facility. For example, some communities in the south live as far as two hours from the nearest hospital that offers OBGYN services. However, disparities go even deeper than this. Those in rural areas face economic disadvantages, a lack of insurance, higher rates of drug and tobacco usage, higher rates of diabetes and obesity, and the list goes on. Therefore, rural physicians must be specifically trained to meet the needs of these communities based on the issues that they have. My further research will focus on what the current strategies in place to help this population are so that I can analyze how they can be improved.
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Project 3 Post 2

 My topic is ethics in clinical trials. I will be focusing on third stage clinical trials (testing for efficacy and safety) in which a new treatment for a previously untreatable condition is being tested. Based on my research, I learned that there is a large conflict between the interests of patients, doctors, and researchers. Patients often participate in trials hoping to gain the possible benefits of an experimental drug, so be assigned to a placebo is obviously not in their interest. This is also not in the interest of doctors, according to the pillar of beneficence, they must choose the most beneficial course of action for their patient. Yet, this is against the interest of researchers as a control group is required for good data. I decided that in this case the interest of the patient is most important, so designing a trial in which they can allows receive the most beneficial treatment is vital. From research, I discovered a third stage clinical trial design known as a respons...
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Project 3 Post 1

 The ethical dilemma that I will be focusing on is medical ethics in clinical trials, specifically medical equipoise. Medical equipoise is the idea that the clinicians who conduct clinical trials should genuinely posses no knowledge of which participants receive the experimental therapy and which receive a placebo. The issue that can occur, however, is that patients may either be harmed by the drug itself or by the placebo. In addition, patients in the placebo arm of the study may be prevented from receiving a potentially effective treatment. This puts in conflict the values of beneficence and non-maleficence with autonomy. Patients may decide to take on higher risk, so placing them into a placebo group without their knowledge would be against autonomy. In addition, beneficence toward future patients by proving the safety and efficacy of a drug comes into conflict with non-maleficence toward present patients. A possible course of action to solve this issue is crossover trials in wh...
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Blog Post #2 Update on Topic and Position

 Instead of focusing on COVID-19 vaccinations, since this is such a polarizing issue, I have decided to change my focus to childhood vaccinations, or the many vaccinations children are often required to receive in order to attend elementary. I have decided to take a fairly paternalistic approach to this issue and argue that states should  legally require vaccinations for children to attend elementary school with only a few strict exceptions. I have chosen this approach for a few reasons. Suboptimal vaccination in the United States has led to the resurgence of previously eliminated diseases.  Legal precedent strongly supports requiring childhood vaccinations. States with the strictest vaccination laws possess the highest childhood vaccination rates. Finally, m aking exceptions difficult to obtain is an effective method to determine their validity and increase compliance. However, t hose who oppose vaccination often possess genuine reasoning and concerns. Therefor...
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Assignment 2 Post 1

 My topic for this writing project is determining to what extent vaccine mandates should be allowed.  Obviously, in this topic there are the black and white perspectives of "everyone should be vaccinated" and "vaccines are not for everyone and should not be required. People posses multiple reasons for supporting both of these perspectives. My articles shared a variety of arguments in favor of both of these two arguments as well as insights into why people support them.  In my first article, the author clearly supported vaccines, specifically against covid. However, the author also argued that the continuation of vaccine mandates was unnecessary given the evolving situation. For example, vaccines were nearly ineffective at stopping the spread of the omicron variant, so the other believed that mandating them was unnecessary. To read the full text, click this link: https://www.proquest.com/docview/2663870583?accountid=14749&parentSessionId=K44DS%2FB8NDEX9J6vpumUmZvjxHaD...
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