Abstract
The University of Virginia hospital currently uses wall mounted dispensers with a sliding fit for the mounting mechanism. However, a recent discontinuation of the product inside has led to the UVA hospital needing an alternative dispenser, which doesn’t align with the existing wall mounts. Removal of the existing dispensers along with the installation of a new wall mount would require drilling into hospital walls, which can release dust, silica particulates and pathogenic bacteria into the air and detrimentally affect patients’ quality of care. To prevent this, hospitals are required to install temporary walls around the area of construction. The cost of installation and removal of the temporary walls in over 100 locations for each dispenser as well as the labor of changing the wall mount would cost the hospital an estimated $5,000.00. To reduce the financial burden and to make future wall mount changes easier, my technical project focuses on developing a mediating component that will attach to existing wall mounts and allow for various possible attachments while maintaining a simple design that can be easily and cheaply manufactured in bulk.
The technical portion of this thesis involved a design and material optimization process. The design was edited to increase versatility and mechanical strength, and finite element analysis simulations were conducted to estimate strength under expected loads of the full dispenser as well as collisions from IV poles. After conducting the simulations, prototypes were 3D printed to conduct usability tests, determining the average time of installation as well as ease of use.
Staying within the field of addressing concerns in healthcare, my STS thesis focuses on the impact that United States politics has on healthcare policy implementation, highlighting women’s health. I researched the impact of healthcare policies on abortion accessibility and reproductive rights, as well as federal vaccination policies. With the high political dissent seen in modern day America, I focused on data from within the past decade. I divided the data into two main categories: data from the governmental level and data on an individual level.
The data collected on the governmental level consisted of statistics, legal matters, and public announcements made by people within the government concerning healthcare and clinical research. To understand the impact that these policies and statements had on the American public, I then researched personal stories of American citizens whose lives had been significantly affected by them. I also incorporated 30 comments concerning the impact of politics in American healthcare from various social media platforms including X, Instagram, and Reddit. To quantify this data for easier analysis, I developed a point scale system from zero to six, and rated the comments on this scale where zero represented a comment that was an unopinionated, factual statement with no intent to insult or offend others of a different political stance. Points were then added for different features found within the comment, with increasing point value for increasingly opinionated features. By achieving all possible points, comments could acquire a score of six. Political affiliation was also determined through either the content of the comment or through other political commentary or posts from the same account. After assigning most comments a political stance (left or right wing), I plotted the points of each comment and found a minimum at point zero and the average point value of the left and right wings to be 2.77 and 2.80, respectively. This indicates the polarization of the political parties, which I argue to be detrimental to the creation of an improved healthcare system in America. To reach a compromised, stable healthcare system that isn’t as easily affected by the political state of the country, I argue that the two main political parties need to become more respectful and tolerant of each other before any forward progress or improvements are seen in the national public health system.
