It may seem to you that healthcare has been a national topic of debate among political leaders for as long as you can remember.
Assignment: Agenda Comparison Grid and Fact Sheet
It may seem to you that healthcare has been a national topic of debate among political leaders for as long as you can remember.
Healthcare has been a policy item and a topic of debate not only in recent times but as far back as the administration of the second U.S. president, John Adams. In 1798, Adams signed legislation requiring that 20 cents per month of a sailor’s paycheck be set aside for covering their medical bills. This represented the first major piece of U.S. healthcare legislation, and the topic of healthcare has been woven into presidential agendas and political debate ever since.
As a healthcare professional, you may be called upon to provide expertise, guidance and/or opinions on healthcare matters as they are debated for inclusion into new policy. You may also be involved in planning new organizational policy and responses to changes in legislation. For all of these reasons you should be prepared to speak to national healthcare issues making the news.
In this Assignment, you will analyze recent presidential healthcare agendas. You also will prepare a fact sheet to communicate the importance of a healthcare issue and the impact on this issue of recent or proposed policy.
To Prepare:
• Review the agenda priorities of the current/sitting U.S. president and at least one previous presidential administration.
• Select an issue related to healthcare that was addressed by two U.S. presidential administrations (current and previous).
• Consider how you would communicate the importance of a healthcare issue to a legislator/policymaker or a member of their staff for inclusion on an agenda.
• Use your Week 1 Discussion post to help with this assignment.
The Assignment: (1- to 2-page Comparison Grid, 1-Page Analysis, and 1-page narrative) with a title page. This is an APA paper. Use 2-3 course resources and at least 2 outside resources.
Part 1: Agenda Comparison Grid
Use the Agenda Comparison Grid Template found in the Learning Resources and complete the Part 1: Agenda Comparison Grid based on the current/sitting U.S. president and the previous president, and their agendas related to the population health concern you selected. Be sure to address the following:
• Identify and provide a brief description of the population health concern you selected.
• Explain how each of the presidential administrations approached the issue.
• Identify the allocation of resources that the presidents dedicated to this issue.
Part 2: Agenda Comparison Grid Analysis
Using the information you recorded in Part 1: Agenda Comparison Grid on the template, complete the Part 2: Agenda Comparison Grid Analysis portion of the template, by addressing the following:
• Which administrative agency (like HHS, CDC, FDA, OHSA) would most likely be responsible for helping you address the healthcare issue you selected and why is this agency the most helpful for the issue?
• How do you think your selected healthcare issue might get on the presidential agenda? How does it stay there?
• An entrepreneur/champion/sponsor helps to move the issue forward. Who would you choose to be the entrepreneur/champion/sponsor (this can be a celebrity, a legislator, an agency director, or others) of the healthcare issue you selected and why would this person be a good entrepreneur/ champion/sponsor? An example is Michael J. Fox is champion for Parkinson’s disease.
Part 3: Fact Sheet
Using the information recorded on the template in Parts 1 and 2, develop a 1-page fact sheet that you could use to communicate with a policymaker/legislator or a member of their staff for this healthcare issue. Be sure to address the following:
• Summarize why this healthcare issue is important and should be included in the agenda for legislation.
• Justify the role of the nurse in agenda setting for healthcare issues. CORE SKILL: comparing how DIFFERENT ADMINISTRATIONS treated the SAME health issue — which reveals that agenda-setting is driven by politics and framing, not only by the objective severity of the problem.
THE ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK — use KINGDON’S MULTIPLE STREAMS MODEL and the paper transforms: three independent streams flow through the system — the PROBLEM stream (conditions get defined as problems, often via a focusing event, a crisis, or a striking indicator), the POLICY stream (a “primeval soup” of solutions floating among experts, waiting for a problem to attach to), and the POLITICS stream (national mood, election results, interest-group pressure, administration turnover). When the three CONVERGE, a POLICY WINDOW opens, and a POLICY ENTREPRENEUR couples a solution to a problem and pushes it through. Windows close quickly. THIS EXPLAINS THE CENTRAL PUZZLE OF THE ASSIGNMENT: why some issues get attention while equally serious ones do not. The answer is rarely “because they were more serious.”
STRUCTURE OF THE GRID: select ONE health issue (opioid crisis, mental health parity, maternal mortality, gun violence as a public health issue, rural hospital closures, prescription drug pricing, health disparities) and compare TWO OR THREE administrations across: how the issue was DEFINED and FRAMED (this is where the action is — framing the opioid crisis as a CRIMINAL JUSTICE problem versus a PUBLIC HEALTH problem produces entirely different policies from identical facts, and that observation is the strongest thing you can say); the specific policy or legislative response; the funding committed; the outcome and its measurement; and the role nurses and nursing organizations played.
BE EVENHANDED. This is graded partly on political neutrality — describe positions accurately and fairly rather than advocating. Assess policies on their evidence and their outcomes, not on party. A paper that reads as partisan will lose marks even where the facts are right.
KEY CONCEPTS TO DEPLOY: agenda-setting; problem definition and framing; focusing events (a crisis that concentrates attention — a mass-casualty event, a high-profile death, a pandemic); INCREMENTALISM (Lindblom — policy usually changes in small steps from the status quo, because comprehensive rational analysis is impossible and coalitions are hard; this explains why sweeping reform is rare and why the ACA looks the way it does); PATH DEPENDENCY (past choices constrain present options — the US employer-based insurance system is an accident of WWII wage controls, and it now shapes everything); interest groups and iron triangles; and the difference between the AGENDA (what gets discussed) and the ALTERNATIVES (what gets considered).
THE FACT SHEET / ADVOCACY component: one page, scannable, with a clear position and a specific ask. Lead with the problem stated in human terms, support with data, name the policy solution, and make the ask concrete.
NURSING’S ROLE: nurses are consistently the most trusted profession in public polling (Gallup, for over two decades) — which is an ADVOCACY ASSET that the profession systematically underuses. That is worth stating as a call to action, and it is a genuine strategic insight rather than a platitude.
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