Written Assignment

Short Paper  (“policy brief”):     Choose one of the three assignments  below(your choice).  Assume the role of  a government official, writing a policy brief from you, the Secretary of Health, to the Minister of Finance (through your own Minister, of course).  Each short paper should be four pages long, double-spaced, in 12 point Times New Roman font.  As a policy brief, the paper should be written in a very clear and very crisp manner, with short sentences, short paragraphs, and as few words as possible.

Each paper needs to be written in a manner that will allow the aide of the Minister of Finance to brief him on it in about 3 minutes in a car on the way to some meeting, since that is what often really happens.  Each paper should be written about a country in a different region of the world.  The papers should be written on low- or middle-income countries, since they are the focus of the course.  This will allow you to use the papers to explore health and development issues in a variety of settings.

The paper should answer the following questions:

  What is the nature and magnitude of the problem?

  Who is affected by it?

  What are the risk factors for the problem?

  What are the economic and social consequences of the problem?

  What few priority steps do you recommend be taken to address the problem and what is your rationale for these recommendations?

(for your short papers)  Choose One of these three topics:

Paper number 1 will summarize, for a country of your choice, the key nutrition issues faced by the country, who they most affect, key risk factors, their link with health and economic development, and what might be done to address them in cost-effective ways.

 

Paper number 2 will summarize for a country of your choice the key issues in women’s OR  children’s health, who is most affected by them, key risk factors, the links between these issues with social and economic development and what might be done to enhance the health of women and children in the poorest countries in cost-effective ways.

Paper number 3 will summarize for a country of your choice the burden of a particular infectious disease or a group of the most important infectious diseases, the people most affected by this disease or diseases, key risk factors, the economic and social costs of the disease(s), and what might be done to address the disease(s) in cost-effective ways.