The paper will be 3-5 pages in length not including title page, references, or appendices.
Double spaced, size 12 font, New Time Roman or similar, and follow APA Manual 7th Ed. scholarly
writing guidelines (the writing center will be helpful with this).
GUIDELINES for developing your AS1
The purpose of this assignment is to identify a health issue that could be mitigated with public health
policy.
Each student will select one category from the leading cause of preventable death in the US and
describe how public health policy could mitigate (lessen) the cause of death. You must choose from one
of the leading causes of death in the US as of 2016, see chapter 2, Table 2-5 Birkhead et.al., 2022 for the
list. A copy of the table is also available in the learning resource folder in Blackboard, week 4.
When seeking additional information on your topic, you may look to federal, state, or local government
agencies/websites, policy think tanks, professional organizations, and from the scientific literature. The
source of the information should be current (within the past 10 years).
HSC 401: Assignment 1 Guidelines and Grading Rubric
AS1_HSC.401
Once you have identified a leading cause of death that is of interest to you, thoroughly answer each of
the questions below with proper grammar, syntax, and follow APA 7th format for in-text citations and
references.
The paper should be developed as follows:
Enter the Title of the paper – this should be centered at the top of your paper.
Introduction paragraph (there is no header for the introduction with APA 7th)
Problem Identification (include this as a header)
1. Describe the leading cause of death, and why this is a leading cause of death,
1. include current data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on
the number of US deaths. Also look to the CDC Wonder website for data.
2. Include State and local data on the number of deaths (suggested state MA however
you may choose another state)
(County Health Rankings will be helpful for State and County data)
2. Population affected (include this as a sub-header): Describe who is mostly affected: Include
demographic information such as males/females; elderly/youth; race/ethnicity; urban/rural
and anything else that would best describe the population affected.
3. Upstream cause of death (include this as a sub-header): Explain what you perceive to be the
upstream cause of death (e.g., what are the social and/or economic factors promoting the
cause). Use the Social Determinants of Health model, County Health Rankings (CHR) model,
and Social-ecological model to answer this question (see chapter 2 of the Birkhead et al.,
2022 text).
4. Policy Recommendation (include this as a sub-header): Describe how the health issue (the
leading cause of death) be lessened by policy at the federal, state, or local level?
• For example, if the issue is a high rate of auto accident-related deaths due to a
lack of signage and lighting in one specific county, consider how local
communities or the state can create policies to initiate and sustain proper
signage and traffic lights for that county. Or, if the rate of auto accident-related
deaths is due to alcohol and drug use how would state or federal policy mitigate
these deaths?
5. Stakeholders (include this as a sub-header): Next, include a list of all potential community
stakeholders and why they would be considered stakeholders
• Stakeholders are the people in the community who are affected by the issue.
Stakeholders would be concerned/interested/motivated about mitigating the
problem/cause of your chosen leading cause of death. For example, consider
health providers, local public health organizations, various educators (i.e.,
elementary, or high school or college), families, local leaders in faith and
especially government and business owners. You’ll need leadership to help you
create and advocate for an effective policy! Next week we take a close look at
existing policy.
HSC 401: Assignment 1 Guidelines and Grading Rubric
AS1_HSC.401
Policy Analysis (include this as a header):
6. Current policy (include this as a sub-header): Identify one current policy aimed at reducing
your chosen topic/ cause of death. For example, if the cause of death is heart disease or
cancer, did years of cigarette smoking play a role? If yes, then you would search for a
current smoking /tobacco policy and describe what policy is already in place to reduce
cigarette smoking.
• Be sure to look for policy at the state and local (city/town) level, as many public
health policies are decided by state and/or local governance.
7. Addressing health inequities (include this as a sub-header): Identify and describe the role
of structural bias, social inequities, health inequities, and racism as they relate to the
leading cause of death. Explain how these persistent, systemic issues will this be addressed
in the current health policy you identified. There’s not one best answer, so do your best to
consider the importance of this in your policy analysis.
8. New (or) amended policy recommendation (include this as a sub-header): Should new or
amended (added to or changed to make it more effective) policies be developed to
mitigate or eliminate these barriers and reduce your chosen preventable cause of death?
Consider the following as you answer this question:
• Explain why a new or amended policy is necessary or not.
• Articulate why a new or amended public health policy would help to reduce your
chosen leading cause of death (identified in week 4). Include all background
information necessary to place the decision in its proper context. You may find it
helpful to include a description of current trends in politics, economics,
technology, etc.
Conclusion ((include this as a header):
1-2 paragraphs summarizing key points.
References (include this as a header):
Must be in APA Format
