CALL FOR PROPOSAL
Third Annual
RIT Undergraduate Global Humanities Conference
April 17 to April 21, 2023
Download full conference program here
The population of the elderly is increasing astronomically across the globe, and the system of care for the population does not match their numbers. Medical problems among them abound, dementia, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, falls, coupled with poly-pharmaceutical conditions. There is also the problem of absence of care. COVID-19 led to multiple narratives of suffering and destitute among the geriatric population and thereby exacerbated their living condition. Yet, COVID-19 forces us to think afresh about the nature and quality of life for the geriatric population. What is quality life for the geriatric population? How do we maintain the humanity of geriatric population? In the tradition of RIT Undergraduate Global Humanities Conference, this conference brings students from RIT Global Campuses-China, Croatia, Dubai, Kosovo, Rochester-- and beyond to engage in the question of quality of life for geriatric population according, but not limited, to the following:
Privacy – Technology
With an aging society, there is a strong need for autonomous systems that can provide quick and continuous healthcare for people. Such systems can monitor the vital parameters, such as the Electrocardiogram (ECG) of the person, at home as well as in outdoor environments, and quickly alert the doctor or emergency response team in case of health problems. With the advent of smartphones, continuous health care delivery has become easier. Today, researchers have been developing vital parameter sensing platforms that use the mobile phone as a gateway (and display), and directly alert the doctor or hospital in case of a problem with a health condition. While continuous mobile health monitoring opens up new care delivery mechanisms, it also creates novel challenges. An important issue that needs to be addressed is the protection and privacy of the data acquired by the systems and communicated through the mobile phone. Any compromise of the vital parameter data during transmission can result in serious consequences for the person being monitored, as it may prevent immediate action from the doctor. Moreover, maintaining the privacy of the data is important to safeguard the person’s personal information. The goal of the present topic is to make more explicit the issued related to data protection and to explore low-complexity end-to-end patient secure systems for mobile health monitoring applications. What are the methodologies to ensure the privacy of data transmitted in healthcare processes through the digital platform? What are the best practices for ensuring smartphone security for healthcare delivery? What are the challenges and benefits to consider for the geriatric population in ensuring this privacy?
Heritage and Culture
Cultural and heritage tourism is emerging as one form of the global tourism industry. Contrary to the various types of mass tourism, cultural and heritage tourism allows for a wider diversity of activity involving a mix of entertainment and education. It may even be used as a means to enhance one’s sensitivity to other cultures, to cultivate an awareness of such major issues like the environment and inequality between nations. Thus, cultural heritage tourism can become an important part of human experience and development. Because of its diversity of forms and purposes, this emerging category of tourism contributes to the segmentation of the customer base by prioritizing certain age groups. The question to be asked is whether the older generation could be considered as an opportunity for the development of cultural and heritage tourism assets. In other words, could such assets be developed as a means to increase the quality of life of older people and even to serve as a form of geriatric health care? If yes, what are the issues to consider, the obstacles to solve, the challenges to overcome, etc., especially in terms of adaptability, accessibility and sustainability?
Palliative Care
Palliative care is a system of caring for someone with serious and end-stage illness in nursing home, Hospice, for example. It is designed to help the sick live as long as they can and as well as they can. Of course, the processes for palliative care for the elderly call for understanding not just the disease, but their conditions of life, especially those conditions beyond medical care. This strand of the conference will address questions like the following: What are the best practices for palliative care for the elderly? How do we ensure the dignity of the elderly in palliative care systems?
Family
Family is the center of the society and the foundation of what each individual becomes. The elderly in most cases served as the life-force of the families that the families could not have existed or thrived without them. What, then, is the role of the family in the life of the elderly? How does the changes in family structure and pattern affect the lives of the elderly? How could one balance caring for the elderly in the family and raising one’s own family? What are the challenges in the lives of the elderly without adequate family support?
Age and Quality of Life
Several vocabularies have emerged to qualify the aging process, namely, “healthy old-age,” “raising the elderly.” The negative connotations in those vocabularies challenge the apparent wisdom that one gains with aging. It is important to address the relationship between aging and quality of life. Does the meaning of life diminish with aging? What is quality of life for the elderly? What must be present in their lives for their lives to earn such a description? Is euthanasia, mercy killing, a factor to such quality?
Lifelong Learning
Why is lifelong learning important for the elderly? How do we ensure and create opportunities for lifelong learning practices for the elderly? What are the challenges to lifelong learning for the elderly? How do we engage the elderly in the knowledge, cultural, and generational transfer in the society?
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Guidelines
1. Your proposal should be no more than 250 words, and should contain your name, email address, school/affiliation, and the topic/title of your presentation.
2. Your proposal should show how your topic fits the conference theme and what your audience will gain from your work relative to the conference theme. We encourage students to work with their faculty mentors prior to submitting their proposals.
Proposal Due Date
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
Letter of Acceptance
If your paper is accepted for presentation, a notification email will be sent to your registered email address by Wednesday, March 15, 2023.
Submission
Submit your proposal through this link.
Contacts
All inquiries about the conference should be addressed to:
Jude Chudi Okpala - jcocada@rit.edu
Julie Cecchini - jtccada@rit.edu