Section 1: Public Health Significance
Describe the public health significance of your group’s topic. Why is this public health problem important to study and address? Include data to support the significance of the issue, not opinions or personal perspectives.
Section 2: Descriptive Epidemiology
Summarize the descriptive epidemiology of the distribution and determinants of your group’s topic. Use epidemiological data appropriately to describe the health disparities and risk factors associated with the topic. Figures and tables supporting this summary should be included at the end of the paper, and do not count towards the page restriction.
Section 3: Evidence-based Recommendations and Solutions
Recommend evidence-based public health actions that could be used to modify the risk factors and disproportionate disease burden described in section 2. Provide a rationale for the risk factors that will be prioritized versus those that will not and use theory and evidence to support your recommendations.
Be sure to demonstrate your understanding of the effectiveness of multiple-level interventions. Recommendations must address at least 2 different levels of the social-ecological model (interpersonal, institutional/organizational, community, and public policy). You may need to piece together multiple effective interventions to provide a comprehensive multi-level approach.
Remember the goal of this course is to explore integrated approaches to public health. Show your ability to integrate approaches to address the risk factors underlying the public health problem. Be sure to address how you will evaluate the effectiveness of your intervention. Discuss considerations for making the intervention culturally competent at each of the levels you identified in your approach.
Note possible ethical concerns that should be considered with your recommended approaches.
Section 4: Stakeholder Analysis and Feasibility
Describe the stakeholders and political climate related to the topic and your proposed recommendations. Introduce, or expand from section 3, a specific public policy change that would need to be addressed in order to support your recommendations. Identify specific agencies that would be responsible for the policy implementation and anticipated funding structure. Explain the political feasibility of that policy change based on your stakeholder analysis. Include how you plan to evaluate the effectiveness of your policy.
Section 5: Integration
Discuss how interdisciplinary cooperation and coordination within the Public Health disciplines as well as inter-sector integration is important for addressing potential solutions to your topic. What was the key discipline outside of public health that you engaged for your topic and how did this influence your approach to crafting a solution?
What are the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary, multi-level, multi-sector integration related to reducing your complex public health problem? Based on your experiences in this course, what can be done to improve integrated approaches to public health in practice? Be sure to specifically address potential roles for the different Public Health disciplines.
