In this paper, you will explore the important role that health communication and health data play in shaping public health and health outcomes. You will analyze various strategies for effectively communicating public health data and the importance of making data-informed interpretations about community health. You will find a news article (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/how-dozens-of-u-s-adolescents-are-dying-of-drug-overdoses-each-month-shown-in-3-charts) that relates to Opioid Overdose Deaths (focus on adolescents). You will evaluate the news article to assess its effectiveness in communicating health information to the public. You will critique the health article and discuss what was done well and what could have been done better. To support your arguments, you will compare two academic research articles to the news article to demonstrate the accuracy or inaccuracy of the information in the news article.
Your paper should address the following questions:
What is health communication, and why is it important for public health?
How can public health data related to your health topic effectively be communicated to engage the public and promote health outcomes?
Does your selected news article effectively or ineffectively communicate health information to the public?
How does the data in the two peer-reviewed journal articles compare to the news article? Was the data in the article reported accurately?
How would you visually represent the data in the two peer-reviewed journals you selected? Create one data visualization from the data in the peer-reviewed journal.
What are the challenges of interpreting and using health data to inform decisions about the health issue you selected, and how can these challenges be overcome?
Paper Requirements: Your final paper should provide insights into the challenges and opportunities of communicating health information to the public and highlight best practices for health communication using the public health topic you selected to illustrate your point.
Your paper should contain these 6 components:
Identify and provide a reference to one news article about the health topic you selected.
Identify and provide references for two or more peer-reviewed articles related to your selected health topic.
Write a 750 to 1000-word paper addressing the 6 questions above.
The paper should include one data visualization (e.g., bar graph, pie chart) using the data from one of the peer-reviewed articles.
The paper should be well organized (introduction, body, conclusion) and free of grammatical and spelling errors.
Provide a properly formatted reference list and in-text citations. Use AMA style.
