Increasing knowledge and campus trust in reporting sexual and interpersonal violence: The role of the Title IX coordinator.

Objective: The present study explores the influence of Title IX awareness on systematic barriers to reporting sexual and interpersonal violence among college students. Participants: The study surveyed undergraduate and graduate students from a public Northeastern institution (n = 10,615). The study also used a sub-sample of those that did not report their experience of violence (n = 6,319). Methods: The relationship between Title IX awareness and non-reporting was examined using the total sample (n = 10,615) and the relationship between Title IX awareness and systematic barriers was examined using the sub-sample of non-reporting participants (n = 6,319). Analysis was conducted using chi-square tests and logistic regression modeling. Results: Students who could identify their Title IX Coordinator were more likely to report their experience of sexual and interpersonal violence and less likely to identify the systematic barriers. Conclusions: The Title IX Coordinator may play a crucial role in increasing reporting knowledge and improving the campus climate.

Legal and ethical issues surrounding the use of crowdsourcing among healthcare providers.

As the pace of medical discovery widens the knowledge-to-practice gap, technologies that enable peer-to-peer crowdsourcing have become increasingly common. Crowdsourcing has the potential to help medical providers collaborate to solve patient-specific problems in real time. We recently conducted the first trial of a mobile, medical crowdsourcing application among healthcare providers in a university hospital setting. In addition to acknowledging the benefits, our participants also raised concerns regarding the potential negative consequences of this emerging technology. In this commentary, we consider the legal and ethical implications of the major findings identified in our previous trial including compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, patient protections, healthcare provider liability, data collection, data retention, distracted doctoring, and multi-directional anonymous posting. We believe the commentary and recommendations raised here will provide a frame of reference for individual providers, provider groups, and institutions to explore the salient legal and ethical issues before they implement these systems into their workflow.