Housing security is vital for the health, wellbeing, and community integration of people with—and without—disabilities. Secure housing allows people to focus on strengthening their relationships, maintaining their health and recuperating from illness, and participating in the community, rather than focusing on mitigating the ill-effects that inadequate housing can exert on them. These include financial stress, disrupted routines, the risk of contracting new illnesses or exacerbating existing ones, and other stressors that can be reduced or...

The Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) proposes to cap Federal Medicaid reimbursements to the states on a per-enrollee basis, effectively limiting growth to a rate at first only modestly exceeding the rate of inflation in healthcare costs and then falling below inflation. If the BCRA were to be enacted, it is reasonable to assume that most states would limit home and community-based services (HCBS) spending to the per-enrollee cap amount; otherwise, any excess comes entirely...

This evaluation was funded by The SCAN Foundation—advancing a coordinated and easily navigated system of high-quality services for older adults that preserve dignity and independence. For more information, visit www.TheSCANFoundation.org.

This study compares health care expenditures among users of Medicaid home and community-based services (HCBS) versus those using extended nursing facility care. Costs for those initiating extended nursing facility care were, on average, $2919 higher adjusted total health care expenditures per month compared to those who initiated HCBS. The difference was primarily attributable to spending on LTSS $2855. On average, the monthly LTSS expenditures were higher for Medicare $1501 and for Medicaid $1344 when LTSS...

Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (hEDS) is a subgroup of connective tissue disorders, characterized by widespread joint pain, frequent subluxations and dislocations,

This senior thesis analyzes why young adults in the United States are disaffiliating with organized Christianity and becoming religiously unaffiliated. The rise of a morality that values personal autonomy along with the decline of religious participation is proposed to be one of the reasons as to why this phenomenon is occurring. As religious affiliation effects political views, this could have long lasting consequences for citizens in the United States.

This dissertation analyzes the efforts of South African conservative evangelical Christians to build multiracial congregations in the wake of apartheid histories of racial violence, division, and inequality. Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted predominantly in Johannesburg, I trace their efforts to address the ongoing salience of race in everyday life through a theologically and socially conservative lens. I ask what semiotic and discursive techniques they employ—some of which emerge from Southern African history,...

Elizabeth and John talk about fantasy's power of world-making with Edinburgh professor Anna Vaninskaya, author of William Morris and the Idea of Community: Romance, History and Propaganda, 1880-1914 (2010) and Fantasies of Time and Death: Dunsany, Eddison, Tolkien (2020). Anna uncovers the melancholy sense of displacement and loss running through Tolkien, and links his notion of "subcreation" to an often concealed theological vision. Not allegory but "application" is praised as a way of reading fantasy....

A significant amount of biomedical research has focused on finding more effective treatments and cures for cancer. However, little research has been conducted on how family caregivers within immigrant and minority communities in the United States experience and understand biomedical, alternative medical, religious, and spiritual forms of cancer treatment for their loved ones. This thesis research explores how Latinx family cancer caregivers experience and engage with cancer care in the United States. Through research, interviews,...

Elizabeth and John talk with Brandeis linguistic anthropologist Janet McIntosh about the language of US alt-right movements. Janet's current book project on language in the military has prompted thoughts about the "implausible deniability" of "Let's Go Brandon"--a phrase that "mocks the idea we have to mince words." The three of them unpack the "regimentation" of the phrase, the way it rubs off on associated signs, and discusses what drill sergeants on Parris Island really do...

The Springboard Fellowship is the largest early career incubator in the Jewish community. More than 240 professionals have participated in Springboard's six cohorts since the Fellowship began in 2016. This report presents the results of the annual study of Springboard and Ezra Fellowship alumni. The annual surveys are an opportunity for understanding the long-term impact of the programs on professional development and decisions around career and leadership. The surveys, fielded in fall 2021, included questions...

After the shocking 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush and his administration launched the Global War on Terror, which put the United States at odds with international jihadist terrorists. A key part in the War on Terror was the creation of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, which ended up housing close to eight hundred suspected terrorists. The Bush administration made the decision to prosecute the Guantanamo detainees using military commissions rather than putting them in the...

The 2021-22 Study of Jewish Louisville provides a comprehensive portrait of the community's 14,200 Jews; their families; their Jewish attitudes, behaviors, and affiliations; their health and financial welfare; and other measures of their engagement in Jewish life. Findings should help the Louisville Jewish community make critical decisions about the next decade of Jewish life in the region.

Endometriosis care-seeking was a complex and difficult process for all of the women in this study. For many participants the process began with pain, however, they did not seek out care at this point, because they believed that what they were experiencing was normal, interpreting it within a cultural context that normalizes period pain. This thesis is a qualitative interview study examining the journeys of ten women with endometriosis in seeking out appropriate care for...

Every year, hundreds of thousands of Jewish children and young adults spend parts of their summers in Jewish summer camps. They could spend anywhere from one to eight or more weeks of their summers at camp. Given the volume of people attending Jewish summer camps, it is inevitable that a significant proportion of these people will identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning (LGBTQ+). Through an analysis of interviews, a review of current...

What leads people to leave behind the communities that they grew up in and pursue a new lifestyle and Jewish observance? How is that discussed, and how do those who have been situated in their community for 10+ years talk about it versus those who are just beginning the process of finding new community? This paper examines how individuals talk about that moment in their lives and their experiences in the midst of going through...

Sexual identity ambiguity may be a unique source of identity distress for emerging adults who may be questioning or uncertain about their sexual orientation. Increased identity distress has been associated with greater reported internalizing symptoms for emerging adults, but there is some research that suggests both family and peer social support may reduce this association. The current study aimed to investigate a) the association between sexual identity ambiguity distress and internalizing symptoms, b) the association...

Many tasks can benefit from the use of multimodal resources, such as vision-languagedatasets, which include images along with textual pieces of information. A common practice is to combine both the visual and textual representations into multimodal models, yet this approach is expensive and not necessarily essential. This work examines the way in which the textual-only parts of visual datasets, which we call “visual corpora”, capture the visualizability of language components, and makes use of their...

In this dissertation, I focused on EEG classification for high-level cognitive activities. I first reviewed the machine learning and deep learning algorithms that already have been implemented in EEG classification and summarized the categories of the state-of-the-art algorithms, which set up the baseline for my experiments.

Emotion regulation deficits are an outcome and risk factor for both insomnia and depression, suggesting that maladaptive emotion regulation might in part explain the bi-directional links between sleep and depression. The current study tests this hypothesis during the COVID-19 pandemic in emerging adult undergraduate students, a high-risk population for both depression and sleep disturbance. A sample of 154 undergraduate students completed a series of online questionnaires bi-weekly on sleep, depression, and emotion regulation strategies across...

This thesis analyzes early Roman imperial literature and its representation of provincials of Gallic and Germanic origin in the first century CE. I focus on the literary conceptualization and portrayal of the provincial identities in relation to the Roman Empire and the Roman identity. I examine and analyze three case studies involving the provincials and their interactions with the Romans in the imperial context. First, the German bodyguards of the Julio-Claudian emperors occupied a difficult...

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a progressive and life-limiting neuromuscular condition that impacts not only the affected individual, but the entire family unit. After receiving a DMD diagnosis in a child, parents are quickly tasked with disclosing information about the condition to other family members, especially unaffected siblings. Parents have reported that healthcare providers are unhelpful at providing specific advice on how to best navigate these difficult conversations, probably due to lack of research on...

Hear Saronik and Kim (hosts of the delightfully lapidary podcast High Theory)'s thoughts on teletherapy, a concept that proves far more familiar, and omnipresent than we at RtB had realized. Take those omnipresent signs for the Suicide Hotline, for starters.... In this 18-minute gem of an episode, Hannah Zeavin talks with HT about teletherapy, from Freud's letters to suicide Iines to therapy apps. This mediated practice is the topic of her new book The Distance...