Community Assessment And Writing A Health Policy Brief Essay This week your assignment will be focusing on conducting a community assessment and writing a health policy brief. You will need to have a community health provider to interview. The interview does not have to be in person but needs to be with a community health provider that works in the community being assessed. You will use the Functional Health Patterns document provided in the Study Materials Folder to conduct a “windshield” survey of your comm

Community Assessment And Writing A Health Policy Brief Essay This week your assignment will be focusing on conducting a community assessment and writing a health policy brief. You will need to have a community health provider to interview. The interview does not have to be in person but needs to be with a community health provider that works in the community being assessed. You will use the Functional Health Patterns document provided in the Study Materials Folder to conduct a “windshield” survey of your comm

In today’s practice of medicine, clinicians,
researchers and health professionals are frequently interested in health policy and seek
opportunities to weigh in on issues where they
may be both well-informed and well-positioned
to take action. However, traditional training of
health professionals does not prepare us to consider or discuss our work for the purpose of
impacting policy. Understanding some basic
guidance for translating unique clinical experience or scientific knowledge into policy terms,
is the first step toward developing a policy lens.
A well-written policy brief has a clear and specific purpose and assumes the author’s understanding of what it is, and what it is not, as well
as clearly targeting the audience for whom it is
intended. Writing a brief, while conceptually
straightforward, may be challenging to initiate
or compose. We offer an approach to preparing
a policy brief, aiming to provide a point of
departure for individuals in the health professions who seek a starting place.Community Assessment And Writing A Health Policy Brief Essay
If policy may broadly be considered movement
in a direction for a reason, a policy brief would in
turn be a focused discussion of an action to
achieve intentional and purposeful movement.
This discussion should include the best available
data or evidence to support a devised policy or
range of policy options, and a narrative analysis
that considers the impact of a proposed policy. As
important as it is to know what constitutes a policy
brief, it is important to recognize what a policy
brief is not. A policy brief is not equivalent to an
advocacy statement and while it may inform or
motivate action, it should refrain from advocating
a singular call to action. Nor is it an opinion
piece that could suggest implications beyond
parameters defined by the supportive evidence.
A policy brief is analytic in nature and allows
the author to remain objective even if the evidence appears persuasive. Furthermore, a brief
is by definition, brief, which often presents the
greatest challenge to an author who must share
the specific purpose while limiting the compreThis article was published Online First December 1,
2016.Community Assessment And Writing A Health Policy Brief Essay
Shale L. Wong, MD, MSPH, Department of Pediatric,
Eugene S. Farley, Jr. Health Policy Center, University of
Colorado School of Medicine; Larry A. Green, MD, Department of Family Medicine, Eugene S. Farley, Jr. Health
Policy Center, University of Colorado School of Medicine;
Andrew W. Bazemore, MD, MPH, Robert Graham Policy
Center, Washington, DC; Benjamin F. Miller, PsyD, Department of Family Medicine, Eugene S. Farley, Jr. Health
Policy Center, University of Colorado School of Medicine.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Benjamin F. Miller, PsyD, Department of Family
Medicine, Eugene S. Farley, Jr. Health Policy Center, University of Colorado School of Medicine, 12631 East 17th
Avenue, Aurora, CO 80045. E-mail: benjamin.miller@
ucdenver.edu
Families, Systems, & Health © 2016 American Psychological Association
2017, Vol. 35, No. 1, 21–24 1091-7527/17/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/fsh0000238
21
hensive context, rationale and potential variability in implementation, regulation or application
of a proposed policy.
The first step is to call it what it is, a policy
brief. Include those words in the title to frame
the issue that follows. A variety of other kinds
of documents may make mention of policy but
clearly have a different focus. Issue and research briefs may present data and evidence to
articulate a problem without necessarily suggesting policy as a solution. In contrast, a policy
brief puts front and center the problem to be
addressed by policy, then presents relevant evidence to support or analyze a proposed policy.
Consider, for example, the introduction of this
policy brief by Richardson, recently published
in Health Affairs. It begins with a heading of
Health Policy Brief followed by the title, OffLabel Drug Promotion. In the first paragraph we
read,Community Assessment And Writing A Health Policy Brief Essay
. . . the FDA generally does not restrict physician
prescribing practices, and many drugs are prescribed
‘off label’–that is, for indications that have not been
approved by the agency. In recent years there has been
renewed debate over whether and how the FDA should
regulate the pharmaceutical industry’s com