Enter your Refinement of an Ultraviolet Filter to Prevent Bloodstream Infections; Assessing Rural-Urban Disparities in Healthcare Sanitation and Infection Control: An Analysis of Trust in Health Systemstitle here

Introduction
Healthcare associated infections (HAIs) affect around 3.2 million people each year and are an important factor in one in three unexpected in-hospital deaths. There are many ways that a patient can contract HAIs with the most common method being by central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs). Currently, the only method of preventing CLABSIs is to make sure that you are following strict hygiene guidelines, but even this is not enough to prevent harmful bacteria from entering the central lines and, eventually, the patients. My technical capstone project is focused on creating a device that can integrate into central lines and help to prevent CLABSIs from occurring. My STS research paper focuses on the comparison of sanitation and cleanliness levels in rural and urban healthcare facilities and the influence these factors have on the trust that the patients have in their systems.

Project Summaries
My STS research paper investigated the disparities between urban and rural health facilities and the effects that these differences have on the trust of the patients that they provide for. In this paper, I highlighted the history of health disparities between these two communities and the current state of affairs that exists in medical facilities and their populations. Additionally, I examined the levels of trust that these populations have towards their healthcare systems in an attempt to relate it to the disparities in sanitation and cleanliness. I concluded that both objective sanitation levels and patient perceptions of cleanliness have significant influence on trust in the healthcare system. This, paired with the findings that rural hospitals have higher rates of HAIs shows that there is a correlation between sanitation rates and overall trust in the healthcare system.
The goal of my technical project was to develop and redesign an Ultraviolet light filtration device for central line tubing. We were given proof of concept using a water filtration device used for bacterial and medicinal testing and were tasked with miniaturizing the model to integrate seamlessly into the clinical workflow. The main goals were to minimize the current device, ensure efficacy of bacterial degradation while maintaining drug concentrations, and design the prototype in a way that could be mass produced for widespread distribution at an affordable and reasonable price. While we were unable to accomplish the bacterial and drug efficacy testing, we hope that future work on our device will show similar results to the testing done by Dr. Thiele and his team.

Conclusion
Both my STS paper and technical research projects involved cleanliness and sanitation in healthcare settings. When our group was first introduced to our technical project, the topic of HAIs and CLABSIs was at the forefront. After some of our initial research, I realized that HAIs are an extremely common occurrence that projects such as our technical topic were designed to counteract. After realizing the importance of the work that we were doing by creating a device that is supposed to combat one of the most prevalent HAIs, I became more aware of the impact that HAIs have on communities and aimed to find if a correlation exists between these healthcare challenges and the levels of trust that patients have in their healthcare system.
Finally, I would like to thank and acknowledge my technical advisor, Dr. Robert Thiele, for all of the guidance he has provided this year as well as my capstone teammates, Tiffany Liu, Caroline Cofran, and Lukas Lehman for their efforts on the project over the past two semesters.

School of Engineering and Applied Science
Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering
Technical Advisor: Dr. Robert Thiele
STS Advisor: Dr. Karina Ryder
Technical Team Members: Caroline Cofran, Lukas Lehman, Tiffany Liu