Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
Filtering by
- Creators: College of Health Solutions
College is the first time many students will experience living away from home and with learning how to manage college course loads, students also need to figure out how to feed themselves for the next four years. The focus of this thesis will be to assess the current food environment available at Arizona State University. The Perceived Food Environment (PFE) Model was used to evaluate the accessibility, affordability, acceptability, and adequacy of the residential dining halls, restaurants, and marketplaces.<br/><br/>The Tempe and Downtown Phoenix campuses’ food environments were used in this paper to determine what they offer and how healthy the food options are for students. Both campuses combined offer 32 possible choices for students to dine. The Tempe campus has 4 dining halls, 15 fast-casual restaurants, and 5 Provisions on Demand (P.O.D) Markets. The Downton campus has 1 dining hall, 6 fast-casual restaurants, 1 P.O.D Market, and 1 marketplace. <br/><br/>Both campuses have good accessibility to all their dining options, even though Downtown lacks many options compared to Tempe. Dining halls also have good accessibility for students who have meal plans. Affordability did vary among locations, it seemed as though many of the healthier restaurants were either too expensive or, in the case of Engrained on the Tempe campus, open for a short amount of time. The fast-casual restaurants seemed to be more affordable and appear in larger amounts than the healthier options. Marketplaces on campus lack fresh food to choose from, so they also promote the habit of poor eating choices. For acceptability, all dining options are popular on campus and accept payments in cash, card, or Maroon & Gold Dollars (M&G). <br/><br/>Overall, the food environment at ASU seems to favor more unhealthy food options. Students do not have much of a choice when needing to find food on campus because there is a lack of fresh ingredients or a kitchen to use. There are also barriers that risk promoting poor food choice that needs to be addressed to solve this problem.
This paper is regarding the nutritional choices college students in Arizona choose. This is based on many factors, but ranks and investigates why students choose this one factor. Students value time over all other factors, money, health, and location.
Healthcare is delivered in many ways across the world. Most countries use one of the four healthcare models, but the United States uses parts of the four models. This leads to issues for patients as they may not know what their insurance plans cover. Providers also have issues with health insurance in getting coverage for their patients. With both patients and providers having issues with insurances, insurance companies have not taken an action to help alleviate some of the issues that everyone faces. Providers are also faced with issues of burnout as they have a lot to do, and not enough time or energy to complete everything. This effects the quality of healthcare that is delivered to their patients as well as when a person can see a provider as there are not enough doctors and nurses to cover the case load all of the time. All in all, providers, insurance companies, and patients need to work together to help fix some of the issues with healthcare to be able to move towards a better healthcare model for all.
Medical recovery time continues to be a drawback for many medical diagnoses and procedures. Prolonged recovery affects all aspects of the population, and targets different avenues of everyday life. Avenues such as providing, attending a job, personal objectives in different ways and even their own well-being. To combat this one area of research that has gained tremendous awareness in recent years is that of platelet-rich fibrin (PRF), which has been utilized across a wide variety of medical fields for the regeneration of soft tissues. PRF, or platelet-rich fibrin, is the next generation treatment of platelet concentrate. PRF is a fibrin matrix composed of platelet cytokines, growth factors and cells used to help wound healing and tissue regeneration. The objective of this thesis is to investigate the potential recovery time difference with PRF incorporation for common medical procedures. The experimental group included three individuals who had PRF treatment at any point during any sort of medical operation. The control group included individuals who did not have PRF treatment at any point and also those who had no prior knowledge of this method of treatment. Results were mixed because of the variative behind the medical procedures. Through observation, PRF treatment improved tolerance of pain, well-being of patients and quality of recovery with three different domains of inquiry per patient testimony. This case-analysis of 6 patients is a preliminary study and therefore inconclusive. PRF is a promising approach and this study suggests that it could potentially be a new medical approach to treatment.
While attending UCLA Brain Research Institute, I completed research, studied, and found an interest in Duplication 15q 11.2-13.1 syndrome. I noticed the lack of awareness on both UCLA and ASU campuses and decided to complete my thesis on raising awareness of this syndrome specifically on the downtown Phoenix campus. Multiple surveys including in-person interviews were conducted that totaled around 50 participants. Participants in the surveys included pre-medical students at ASU downtown and an ASU mission team for disabilities and empowerment. Data collected from surveys led to the creation of an online research hub that can give a person access to all things Dup15q with one click. This type of awareness is important as misdiagnosis of rare genetic disorders is a leading cause of infant mortality.
The on-campus dining options across the Tempe and Downtown campuses were evaluated using two established measures: The Full Restaurant Evaluation Supporting a Healthy Dining Environment Audit (FRESH) & The Nutrition Environment Measures Survey (NEMS). A total of 31 on-campus dining facilities including twenty-two fast-casual restaurants, five markets and four dining halls were evaluated for this study. The results from these surveys assisted in determining if the nutritional environment provided by Arizona State supports healthy eating behaviors or if it incentives students to make poor nutritional choices.
Of the 21 restaurants evaluated using the FRESH survey, scores ranged from 33% to 63% of the total points possible. The maximum total score was awarded to Engrained on the Tempe Campus with a score of 91 and the minimum score was received by the Domino’s Pizza on the Downtown Campus with a score of 48. Of the four dining halls evaluated, the highest total score was 85 and the lowest was 79, indicating low variability amongst the dining halls. Out of the 22 restaurants evaluated using the NEMS-R, 32% fell within the lowest of the four quartiles of score distribution, 36% fell within the second lowest, 27% fell within the third quartile and a mere 4%, accounting for one restaurant (Engrained), fell within the top tier.
The loss of points amongst the restaurants and dining halls is mostly attributed to lack of fresh sides, lack of healthy entrees and barriers to healthy decision making. The restaurants that were classified as the healthiest options had limited hours of operations past 4 pm on weekdays and were not open on weekends. Additionally, the entrees at these restaurants averaged between $4-6 more expensive than those that were classified as the unhealthiest. The unhealthiest options also had the most hours of operation as they were open past 2 am every day of the week.
Overall, the campus dining environment provided by Arizona State University does not enable students to make healthy nutritional choices. In a setting where most students living on-campus do not have transportation or a full kitchen to prepare their own food in, a majority of their meals are consumed via on-campus dining options. Based on the overall assessment of healthy options, the barriers to healthy decision making, the hours of availability and the cost associated with healthier alternatives, the campus environment assists students in making poor nutritional choices.
Method: A cross-sectional review of existing research about student food choice was considered and sourced from recent articles in peer-reviewed journals. Specific areas of study identified as having an impact of food choice included meal plans, nutrition and diet quality, weight management, purchasing behavior, student knowledge, eating habits and food security. Each area was evaluated based on available research and how it may coincide with meal plans to affect student food choices. Recommendations for future studies were made regarding gaps in existing research.
Conclusion: There are several factors that influence student food choices and none that stand alone. These factors must instead be considered in conjunction with one another. The implication of meal plans is largely unknown, yet students across the country at different universities participate in them every year. Further research is needed on how meal plans may create a type of food desert or food insecurity for students who live on campus and depend on the meal plan. It is possible the meal plan not only restricts student options but those students who live on campus may be especially affected due to an inability to obtain healthy food after hours or on weekends.
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a neurosurgical procedure involving placement of an electrode in the form of a DBS lead into a deep brain nucleus to treat a variety of neurologic conditions such as Parkinson’s Disease and Essential Tremor. DBS lead placement requires a head-mounted stereotactic device that utilizes a three-dimensional coordinate system to locate a surgical target. Traditional stereotactic systems are designed for a wide variety of procedures and therefore can be large and cumbersome, causing patient discomfort. To address this, NaviNetics, Inc. has recently developed the FDA 510(k)-cleared D1 Stereotactic system. This system replaces the conventional base frame to a 44.45 mm X 44.45 mm skull-anchored platform called the Key. The Key serves as the interface to which other components of the D1 Stereotactic system, including imaging localizers and the D1 Frame, easily attach and detach from the patient’s head without disrupting stereotactic spatial reference. We have now advanced the system to an aluminum design that has demonstrated a mechanical accuracy of ≤ 0.9mm. This manuscript outlines a step-by-step protocol for using the D1 Stereotactic system to aid in DBS surgery. Link to video.