Katie Trauth Taylor, PhD

This book provides insight into the initial deployment of a Lean Management System across VA, the nation's largest healthcare system. The book presents the origins of VA's Lean Enterprise Transformation (LET) in its 156 medical centers. The authors detail the clinical and administrative outcomes of these efforts, as well as the formative evaluation methods used to monitor and improve the VAs LET deployment and examines how the VA strives to provide the best patient experiences for our Veterans.… Show more

This book provides insight into the initial deployment of a Lean Management System across VA, the nation's largest healthcare system. The book presents the origins of VA's Lean Enterprise Transformation (LET) in its 156 medical centers. The authors detail the clinical and administrative outcomes of these efforts, as well as the formative evaluation methods used to monitor and improve the VAs LET deployment and examines how the VA strives to provide the best patient experiences for our Veterans. The book takes a comprehensive, multi-level approach, revealing how innovation in VA healthcare is occurring through narratives from leaders, administrators, physicians and staff. Show less

Chapter 5 of Appalachia Revisited: New Perspectives on Place, Traditions, and Progress
Known for its dramatic beauty and valuable natural resources, Appalachia has undergone significant technological, economic, political, and environmental changes in recent decades. Home to distinctive traditions and a rich cultural heritage, the area is also plagued by poverty, insufficient healthcare and education, drug addiction, and ecological devastation. This complex and controversial region has been… Show more

Chapter 5 of Appalachia Revisited: New Perspectives on Place, Traditions, and Progress
Known for its dramatic beauty and valuable natural resources, Appalachia has undergone significant technological, economic, political, and environmental changes in recent decades. Home to distinctive traditions and a rich cultural heritage, the area is also plagued by poverty, insufficient healthcare and education, drug addiction, and ecological devastation. This complex and controversial region has been examined by generations of scholars, activists, and civil servants―all offering an array of perspectives on Appalachia and its people.

In this innovative volume, editors William Schumann and Rebecca Adkins Fletcher assemble both scholars and nonprofit practitioners to examine how Appalachia is perceived both within and beyond its borders. Together, they investigate the region's transformation and analyze how it is currently approached as a topic of academic inquiry. Arguing that interdisciplinary and comparative place-based studies increasingly matter, the contributors investigate numerous topics, including race and gender, environmental transformation, university-community collaborations, cyber identities, fracking, contemporary activist strategies, and analyze Appalachia in the context of local-to-global change.

A pathbreaking study analyzing continuity and change in the region through a global framework, Appalachia Revisited is essential reading for scholars and students as well as for policymakers, community and charitable organizers, and those involved in community development. Show less

Every year, over a million Veterans file claims with the Veterans Benefits Administration. They file for injuries ranging from the annoying to the life-altering, for increases in existing disability ratings, for benefits for family members. They come right after the military, young but prudent, or late in life, when their body has started to betray them. It could be their first claim or their fortieth. The vast majority of Veterans, when they receive their decision, won’t appeal. But over one… Show more

Every year, over a million Veterans file claims with the Veterans Benefits Administration. They file for injuries ranging from the annoying to the life-altering, for increases in existing disability ratings, for benefits for family members. They come right after the military, young but prudent, or late in life, when their body has started to betray them. It could be their first claim or their fortieth. The vast majority of Veterans, when they receive their decision, won’t appeal. But over one hundred thousand will. They’ll appeal because they disagree with their decision, because they don’t understand their denial, or because it’s their right. They’ll appeal because they want to be heard. Show less

Chapter 6 of Rereading Appalachia: Literacy, Place, and Cultural Resistance
Appalachia faces overwhelming challenges that plague many rural areas across the country, including poorly funded schools, stagnant economic development, corrupt political systems, poverty, and drug abuse. Its citizens, in turn, have often been the target of unkind characterizations depicting them as illiterate or backward. Despite entrenched social and economic disadvantages, the region is also known for its strong… Show more

Chapter 6 of Rereading Appalachia: Literacy, Place, and Cultural Resistance
Appalachia faces overwhelming challenges that plague many rural areas across the country, including poorly funded schools, stagnant economic development, corrupt political systems, poverty, and drug abuse. Its citizens, in turn, have often been the target of unkind characterizations depicting them as illiterate or backward. Despite entrenched social and economic disadvantages, the region is also known for its strong sense of culture, language, and community.

In this innovative volume, a multidisciplinary team of both established and rising scholars challenge Appalachian stereotypes through an examination of language and rhetoric. Together, the contributors offer a new perspective on Appalachia and its literacy, hoping to counteract essentialist or class-based arguments about the region's people, and reexamine past research in the context of researcher bias.

Featuring a mix of traditional scholarship and personal narratives, Rereading Appalachia assesses a number of pressing topics, including the struggles of first-generation college students and the pressure to leave the area in search of higher-quality jobs, prejudice toward the LGBT community, and the emergence of Appalachian and Affrilachian art in urban communities. The volume also offers rich historical perspectives on issues such as the intended and unintended consequences of education activist Cora Wilson Stewart's campaign to promote literacy at the Kentucky Moonlight Schools.

A call to arms for those studying the heritage and culture of Appalachia, this timely collection provides fresh perspectives on the region, its people, and their literacy beliefs and practices. Show less

In 2011, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) engaged a small set of interested VA healthcare systems in the integration and deployment of Lean Enterprise Transformation strategies. Based on the success of these systems, a journey to deploy an enterprise-wide quality improvement strategy with a core foundation of patient safety was initiated in 2014. Aligning with core principles from High Reliability Organizations, the goals of this program are to 1) develop an enhanced Safety Culture; 2)… Show more

In 2011, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) engaged a small set of interested VA healthcare systems in the integration and deployment of Lean Enterprise Transformation strategies. Based on the success of these systems, a journey to deploy an enterprise-wide quality improvement strategy with a core foundation of patient safety was initiated in 2014. Aligning with core principles from High Reliability Organizations, the goals of this program are to 1) develop an enhanced Safety Culture; 2) facilitate integration with New Technologies to Enhance Practice; 3) ensure that, when appropriate, Evidence Based Practice is the basis upon which all clinical care is administered; and 4) provide the highest levels of effective and efficient administrative processes through implementation of Lean Management Tools/Methods. This paper overviews the initial development and evolution of the VHA enterprise-wide quality strategy; the successes and challenges of deploying this program; and the status of the program to date. We conclude with a proposed model for further research in this area. Show less

Attuned Advocacy examines the ways Appalachian identity is circulated and negotiated within the public rhetorics of a non-profit advocacy organization called the Urban Appalachian Council. Unforgiving educational stereotypes continue to haunt Appalachian peoples and their language practices. It is true that the region faces harsh problems of poverty, unemployment, high school drop-out rates, and literacy attainment. Yet in academic efforts to draw attention to these struggles, researchers often… Show more

Attuned Advocacy examines the ways Appalachian identity is circulated and negotiated within the public rhetorics of a non-profit advocacy organization called the Urban Appalachian Council. Unforgiving educational stereotypes continue to haunt Appalachian peoples and their language practices. It is true that the region faces harsh problems of poverty, unemployment, high school drop-out rates, and literacy attainment. Yet in academic efforts to draw attention to these struggles, researchers often emphasize only the region's problems, ignoring the everyday rhetorical strategies of diverse Appalachians as they navigate lived realities—especially when those individuals migrate to urban cities beyond the mountains. This dissertation draws upon observations and interviews with organization leaders and community residents in one of Cincinnati's Urban Appalachian neighborhoods to argue that rhetoric can play a critical role in 1) generating more diverse conceptions of Appalachian identity, and 2) building networked collaborations of support for groups facing histories of oppression, stereotyping, and struggle. Findings trace an increase in inclusivity and diversity in Appalachian advocacy from the 1960s to the 2010s; the empowering relationship between an organization's public rhetorics and its individual community members' attitudes toward their cultural identities; and the role arts movements play in building community and challenging cultural stereotypes. Drawing on these findings, Attuned Advocacy forwards an ethical research methodology centered on the rhetorical art of attunement, which holds scholars and advocates responsible for attuning research interests to meet the needs of local communities. Show less

Given the intense national interest in improving the quality, efficiency and efficacy of healthcare delivery systems, a greater understanding of enterprise-level deployment of Lean Management Systems by U.S. healthcare organizations is required. We conducted a realist review of successful enterprise-level Lean Deployments within healthcare organizations. Synthesis and analysis of the results from this review indicated five primary strategies associated with successful healthcare-based Lean… Show more

Given the intense national interest in improving the quality, efficiency and efficacy of healthcare delivery systems, a greater understanding of enterprise-level deployment of Lean Management Systems by U.S. healthcare organizations is required. We conducted a realist review of successful enterprise-level Lean Deployments within healthcare organizations. Synthesis and analysis of the results from this review indicated five primary strategies associated with successful healthcare-based Lean deployments. A dynamic cross-case analysis conducted within the review indicated that the specific mechanisms applied to implement these strategies are emergent within multiple transitional phases spanning 6-8 years. To supplement the findings from the realist review, a set of dynamic hypotheses and a system dynamics model were created to explore these phase transitions. The results from this work indicate that no steady state initial conditions exist that would support sustained enterprise-level transformation. The emergent nature of these deployments is necessary to overcome constraints related to organizational capacity and capability. Show less

Contributing to existing scholarship on literacy-learning in graduate school, we argue here for the value of documenting, interacting with, and circulating the myriad ways students internalize and act upon the shadows and suggestions of proficient literacy practices. As we detail in the next section, we argue that digital space and online interaction in the form of an interactive archival space represents one way to facilitate the circulation and responsivity we find so integral to the ways… Show more

Contributing to existing scholarship on literacy-learning in graduate school, we argue here for the value of documenting, interacting with, and circulating the myriad ways students internalize and act upon the shadows and suggestions of proficient literacy practices. As we detail in the next section, we argue that digital space and online interaction in the form of an interactive archival space represents one way to facilitate the circulation and responsivity we find so integral to the ways literacy happens in the context of graduate school. Whether or not direct instruction exists in any given form, in any given program, literacy practices still form and reform as graduate students attempt to understand, often completely individually, what it takes to successfully do the reading and writing work required of them. In the next section, we forward archival "literacy in the raw" as one approach to creating more interaction and responsibility within graduate literacy. Show less

Service-learning courses have typically encouraged students to write for or about communities. Such courses rarely involve students writing with the communities they serve, despite the growing number of opportunities for collaboration afforded by digital media. Scholarship on collaborative writing with communities in service-learning courses is scarce; research on collaboration using digital, multimodal texts is more so. Arguing that digital technologies have the potential to make… Show more

Service-learning courses have typically encouraged students to write for or about communities. Such courses rarely involve students writing with the communities they serve, despite the growing number of opportunities for collaboration afforded by digital media. Scholarship on collaborative writing with communities in service-learning courses is scarce; research on collaboration using digital, multimodal texts is more so. Arguing that digital technologies have the potential to make service-learning more reciprocal and effective for all participants, this article 1) suggests that digital spaces are an underutilized technology in community-university partnerships; 2) discusses common barriers to using digital mediums collaboratively; and 3) recommends a set of best practices for introducing collaborative digital writing into service-learning courses. Show less

Here, I critically examine the possibilities and limitations of activism vis-à-vis MTR in order to offer an ethical model of advocacy centered on the rhetorical art of attunement. In Fall 2007, an undergraduate course in Appalachian Literature inspired me to conduct interviews with families affected by mountaintop removal mining in eastern Kentucky. The article you read today was written five years later, after greater reflection on that journey.

At the corner of Fourth Street and Court Avenue in Covington, Kentucky sits the Hermes Building, known today as the popular restaurant, pub, and concert venue, Molly Malone’s Irish Pub. The building, now over one hundred and twenty years old, resounds with stories that recall its legendary past. It is said that the building was once the property of a scandalous local politician; an unjust courthouse during the racially-tense years following Emancipation; a bawdy German distillery and brothel;… Show more

At the corner of Fourth Street and Court Avenue in Covington, Kentucky sits the Hermes Building, known today as the popular restaurant, pub, and concert venue, Molly Malone’s Irish Pub. The building, now over one hundred and twenty years old, resounds with stories that recall its legendary past. It is said that the building was once the property of a scandalous local politician; an unjust courthouse during the racially-tense years following Emancipation; a bawdy German distillery and brothel; the residence of a murderer; and the current home to strange supernatural occurrences. Today, when local people tell stories of the building’s past, they pay special attention to the uncanny. Their stories feature swinging lights, self-closing windows, voices that resonate from silence and a lady-in-white who hovers in the vacant basement. Show less