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NR514: Epidemiology and Population Health

Overview of Project Paper

Throughout this course, you will be learning about public health and the use of epidemiologic information to develop, implement and evaluate population health programs. There are several smaller projects and one major paper that is broken into sections to help illustrate the application of theory to areas I hope you are passionate about.

Week 02 Assignment – Public Health

Identify an area of public health that interests you. Areas to consider include reproductive justice, access to fresh foods, access to mammography, vaccinations, avoiding diabetes in certain population or anything else that interests you. Write no more than 300 words about what that problem is and why it is important.

Week 05 Assignment – Literature Review

Identify the target population you will focus on. For instance, if your interest is in access to mammography, this is your chance to become more specific, such as access to mammography among black women (a vulnerable group) in rural areas of Vermont. Write a paragraph about why this specific population is of concern regarding this particular health problem.

Review the literature. Discuss the medical literature but also include information pertaining to applicable law and regulation, statistics (include attendant data sources) and synthesize the information to describe the extent of the problem.

Week 06 Assignment – SMART Goals

What do you want to accomplish with your program? Write at least three measurable goals but don’t boil the ocean. For example: Increase the national vaccination rate for all children in the US is a bit ambitious. Improving the vaccination rate among preschoolers seen in a free clinic by 1% may be more doable, unless the vaccination rate is already quite high. But before you can get to an outcome goal such as an increased vaccination rate, you probably should address some process goals. Maybe something like improving knowledge about immunization among newly hired nurses as evidenced by successfully completing a novel course on immunizations within the first three months of hire.

Week 08 Assignment – Planned Interventions

In the last paper, you set your goals. Now, identify at least two interventions you will institute as part of the program you are developing. Maybe its presenting a 30 min in-service to the nursing staff addressing fears and misconceptions about diabetes among your target group. For whatever it is, please describe

· What each intervention will entail

· Key organizations and individuals to include in planning. Discuss the role and legitimacy of these choices.

· Timeline

· Assignment of duties and responsibilities

· Potential Funding source

· Communications plan

Critique each of the identified interventions and report as a SWOT.

Week 09 Assignment – Linguistic or Cultural Challenges

In one page, identify potential linguistic or cultural challenges your population of interest may have and how you addressed these issues in these materials or in your population of interest as a whole.

Submit PT or professional education materials you will use to augment the program you are designing. Submit at least one professional and one public facing educational piece. No resource should exceed two pages in length.

Week 10 Assignment – Finished Project Plan

Use all the different assignments and discussion content to create your finished Project Plan paper. This needs to include your Public Health area of interest the problem(s) with this area and its affected population, the literature around that population, your SMART goals, your planned interventions, the challenges (linguistic/cultural/other) with the interventions and the population, along with your evaluation plan (see below). This paper should be 5-10 pages in APA style including an abstract and references.

Include in your finished Project Plan an evaluation plan with at least one data driven outcome measure for each goal you specified and include the data source. Identify who will evaluate the program and why they are selected.

Week 11 Assignment – Elevator Pitch

Have you ever heard of an elevator pitch? The idea is that you can summarize the salient points of your project or argument so concisely that you could convince someone in a 90 second elevator ride to adopt your point of view. Here is the scenario: You are applying for funding for your project. This could be an outside investor or asking for a budget from your employer. You are given an opportunity to advocate for funding or acceptance of your program at the next board meeting.

Record an audio only version of your pitch and then submit two files: your audio recording and a Word document of your script. (You don’t actually have to record it in an elevator.)