Revisions are needed on the paper I submitted for school. I have uploaded a file titled default.pdf which explains. Any section that scored less than a 3 needs to be revised. Please read teachers comments. Aspects B3, B5, C2 - C2f, D1 and D2 require addre

FAQ’s – You Asked, We Answered

C159: Policy, Politics, and Global Health

Frequently Asked Questions about the Policy Paper

Clarifying the Rubric Criteria

Section A: Describing Importance of your selected issue and why it is important

A1. Public Policy Issue

What is the issue/problem you are trying to improve?

A1a. Issue Selection

Why did you select this issue to focus on? Why is it a problem for your community? Your state? Or the nation?

A1b. Issue Relevance

Why is this topic important to the health of the public? Why should this issue be addressed as a public policy? Be sure to use at least 2 citations from current (within the last five years), academically appropriate literature to support why this issue in an important public issue. We recommend that you include at least 2 – 3 nursing sources (from nursing journals).  Nursing research includes articles from nursing journals or research that has been conducted by nurses. Although this is not a requirement for this section, you will be required to use nursing research in B1a.

A1c. Financial Impact

What is impact of your policy on the system? For example, if your policy relates to nurse staffing ratios, it could cost organizations considerably more to hire additional nurses. However, with improved staffing, patient outcomes may improve and re-admissions might be avoided, so in the long run, money is saved for both the institutions and the patients. Will your policy require additional people or funding? Is there a potential for your policy to save money over the long term?

A2. Personal Values

In this section you will discuss how your own personal/professional values relate to this policy. Have you experienced or seen adverse effects of this issue on people’s health or on the nursing profession? Why do you personally believe that this is an important policy? It is okay to write in 1st person to discuss the personal values, why you selected the topic, and the ethical principle you think applies to the policy.

    A2a. Ethical Principle, refers specifically to an ethical Principle or Theory. You can find a list of Nursing Ethical Principles and Theories in the "Ethical Theories Applied to Nurses' Policy Positions" unit of the course of study. There is a link to a handout from the ANA which identifies and defines nursing Ethical Principles.  We suggest you pick 1 or 2 from this list and describe how the nursing ethical principle/s could apply to your proposed policy.  The ANA Ethical Theories and Principles document can also be found here: http://nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/EthicsStandards/Resources/Ethics-Definitions.pdf

Section B: The Top-Down Approach

B1. Decision Maker: You will need to identify who you will give your proposal to. Who has the power and authority to move your policy forward? For example, if you are trying to change a state law, your Decision Maker would be a state Representative or State Senator who can draft a bill. If you are trying to change a policy in all schools throughout your state, your Decision Maker might be the State Superintendent of Schools. If you are trying to change a nursing license requirement, your initial decision maker would most likely be someone at the State Board of Nursing, who would then make a recommendation to a lawmaker. In this section, be sure you list the Name and Title of Decision Maker, i.e.: Senator Joan Brown, California Senate District 3. For this section you only have to list the name and title of the Decision Maker.  

   In B1a. Explanation you need to use nursing research to support why this issue needs to be addressed by a public policy (law).  Why is this issue important enough that it should be a law?  What is the impact of your issue on the health of the public?  You may have already discussed this (especially in section A) but here you’ll summarize the importance and demonstrate that this topic is important enough that your decision maker should move your policy forward. We recommend that you include at least 2 – 3 nursing sources (from nursing journals), and these may have already been cited in other parts of your paper.  Nursing research includes articles from nursing journals or research that has been conducted by nurses.

     In B2. Challenges. You will identify some challenges that your decision maker will likely face in trying to get the bill passed into law. Typically, challenges that lawmakers face are during public hearings (who or what groups may speak out in opposition to the bill?) and funding - if this policy will require additional funding, where will the government get the money? So, a challenge would be that there may not be appropriate funding to support the policy proposed. For purposes of this paper, you will not focus on implementing the policy, but your focus should be on the steps to getting the policy into law or formal policy statement.

    B3. Options. This section asks you to describe some options the Decision Maker has when you present your policy proposal.  What choices/options does the Decision Maker have when they hear your proposal?  We usually recommend that students try to identify 3 options. The first option is often to do nothing...The decision maker has the option of reading your policy proposal and deciding to just leave things as they are currently (the status quo). Why do you think this option is not a good option for your state? A second option for the decision maker is to set a different policy. In this case, it might be that the decision maker decides to require some alternative, or part-way, measure. This might be a policy that another state has adopted, or one that you read about. Why would this second option not be the best option for your state (i.e., how might this option fall short of fully addressing the problem?). A third option might be to support and pass your policy proposal for mandated staffing ratios. Again, you would provide your rationale - Why would your Policy (the 3rd option) be the very best for your state?

     In B4. Course of Action. You will be writing recommendations for addressing/reducing the Challenges you identified in section B2. What might your lawmaker do to address those challenges? For example, if one of the challenges is that the general public and other lawmakers may not understand the health risks and importance of vaccines, one Action Step the decision maker might do is to invite the State Epidemiologist to the public hearing to present information about risks of disease and benefits of immunizations. 

     In section B5 Success of Policy Brief. We recommend that you identify successes in both the process and long term outcome of your policy change. For example, if you are trying to get a law passed, your first success is when a legislator agrees to sponsor a bill, the next success is when the bill passes committee hearings, etc. Once the bill in signed into law, what do you expect to be different? For example, if we were proposing a change in childhood immunization requirements, a longer success would be that: Over time there would be a notable decrease in morbidity, mortality, and health care costs related to adverse events or preventable disease spread resulting from lack of immunizations.

Section C: The Bottom-up Approach

Section C1. This section asks you to identify an organization or community that has an interest in your topic. In reality you would probably partner with several different groups, but for this paper we recommend that you identify just one group. This section is only naming the organization you will work with.

In Section C1a. Summary of Expressed Interest, you will discuss how you know that your selected organization is interested in this health issue/problem. Do they have information on their website? Printed materials? Is this issue a topic at annual meetings? Or…? What makes you think they might want to collaborate with you to address this problem?

C2: CBPR Principles. In this section you’ll identify 3 CBPR Principles that you will use in your work with the community group you chose to collaborate with. You can find a list of 9 CBPR Principles in your Course of Study: Open the Policy Process unit from the left-hand menu bar, when this section opens, scroll down to the “Apply: Bottom/-up Approach” section. There you’ll find a link to Promoting Healthy Public Policy through Community-Based Participatory Research: Ten Case Studies . Pages 7 – 15 provide an overview and introduction to Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR), and a list of the 9 CBPR principles can be found at the bottom of page 13. From this list of 9 Principles, you’ll select 3 principles you could use in your work with your selected group. You can also find this document directly at: http://depts.washington.edu/ccph/pdf_files/CBPR_final.pdf

A good website to go to for a bulleted list of the CBPR principles is: https://depts.washington.edu/ccph/cbpr/u1/u11.php

C2a. Approach and Collaboration. How will you start your work with the selected community group? How will you initiate contact with the group? Will you call the group president? Attend a regularly scheduled meeting? Once you’ve made initial contact, how might your start actually working with group members? Will you meet once each week over lunch? Will you attend their already scheduled group meetings to present and discuss information about your topic? Try to be as specific as possible – with enough detail that someone else could follow your plan if you weren’t able to work on the policy.

In C2b. Goal Alignment. You will discuss how you know that the organization’s goals are similar to the goal of your policy. For example, if you were working with a school nurses’ group to address the issue of childhood obesity, you might discuss how the School Nurses’ Association is committed to improving health for children which directly aligns with your policy goal of increasing access to health foods and physical activity in schools.

In C2c Action Steps. You will want to talk about the specific steps your group will take to influence a change related to your problem/issue. You action steps (maybe 3 -5 important activities) should be specific enough that someone else could follow your plan.  For example, of you are thinking about student navigators, you might identify that your group will talk with nursing student classes at the local college. You will then evaluate these action steps in C2f.

    C2d Roles/Responsibilities. This section is about the roles and responsibilities that members take in the committee work.  It helps to think about what you need the community group to do - then you can identify specific individuals to take on those functions. For example, someone will need to serve as the facilitator or convener of your meetings or someone with experience working with the media might serve as a Media Relations expert for your group. If you have planned a town hall meeting you may want to include a subject matter expert to lead the public session, or you may want someone with experience as a health educator to work with a parents group, etc. We recommend discussing 3 - 4 key roles that you will need members to assume. The important part is to identify what your group needs people to do in order to accomplish your Action Steps, and then identify group members (by position) who have the knowledge, skills, or experience to take on those roles.

   C2e Key elements. In this section you are evaluating the process of how you worked with your community group. Specifically, you will want to discuss how your committee used or would use the 3 CBPR principles you identified in section C2. What did it look like as your group used or would use each of the 3 principles?

C2f Evaluation. In this section you will evaluate the success of your work with the committee. We recommend that you identify how you will measure the success of each of your Action Steps (from C2c) and the CBPR principles, and also include one longer term outcome - what will be different if your committee is successful in meeting your goal?

If you said you would meet bi-monthly, did you?  If you said you would develop a specific curriculum or plan within 3 months, did you Once you evaluate the Action Steps, we recommend identifying at least one longer term outcome.  What will be different a year (or 5 years) later if your policy changes are effective?

Section D: Evaluating the Effectiveness of the two Approaches for changing policy

D1: Strengths of Each Approach. In this section you should identify and discuss at least a couple of strengths of the Top-Down Approach (the policy approach you discussed in part B) and also identify and discuss some strengths of the Bottom-up Approach (the community-based approach you wrote about in Part C).

D2: Challenges of Each Approach. In this section you will identify some challenges, or barriers, to both the Top-Down, formal policy approach you discussed in Part B as well as some challenges or barriers to the Bottom-up, community-based approach, you discussed in Part C.

D3. Most Effective Approach. In about a paragraph or so you will discuss which approach (Top-Down or Bottom-Up) you would select to use if you were going to actually work on this policy change. There is not a “right” answer, because both approaches can be used effectively to change policy. Based on what you know about the issue, about your community, and about the political climate in your area, which approach do you think would work best if you wanted to make this policy change? It is okay to write this in 1st person.