Please double space the paper, use Times New Roman , default margins (1″ all around) MLAstyle for the citations. This assignment is 4 to 5 pages in length. Do not exceed this page limit.
Mary Otto’s book, Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America, explores a wide range of themes relating to oral health care in America. Many of these themes link directly to issues of health inequalities, access to health care, and the health professions that we are discussing this semester.
Your goal for this paper is to select an oral health issue from the book that you feel resonates well with our course material, and to dig deeper into the scholarly research on this topic to gain a better understanding of the underlying issues. Any one of our modules are relevant to the book, or there may be a theme you wish to address which overlaps with several. Then, link your oral health issue to a broader issue in health and health care. Keep in mind that Mary Otto is a journalist by profession, not a social scientist, so her views may or may not match what scholars have found.
In 4 to 5 pages, your paper should:
Select an oral health issue and briefly summarize Otto’s arguments about it. In doing so, describe how she supports her argument about the issue (e.g., case studies, government statistics, published research). (roughly 1 page; 25 points)
Summarize Otto’s argument about the issue (15 points)
Describe the evidence she uses (10 points)
Based on a minimum of 2 published articles on this oral health issue, what more have you learned about your topic from scholarly research? Does the literature you’ve found mostly support Otto’s claims, or does it raise additional issues that she did not discuss? (1 to 1.5 pages; 25 points)
Summarize & discuss the relevance of the new research to Otto’s arguments about this issue (20 points)
How does this additional information further complicate the story of dental care? (5 points)
Link your oral health issue to a broader issue in health and health care, and discuss whether you feel they are of the same magnitude or importance. How do the policy responses to both compare? Be specific and give examples (1 to 1.5 pages: 35 points)
Linking oral health issue to a specific issue in health care that is comparable (5 points)
Compare the issues (15 points)
Compare the policy responses (15 points)
Conclude your paper with what you’ve learned about these issues and how we might improve oral health in the future. Be specific with your recommendations (1 page; 15 points)
Is the suggestion linked to or supported by what was discussed? (10 points)
Personal thoughts (5 points)
