ASSIGNMENT: Brief Report due October 5, 2009

Health 54
Brief Report

America’s Health

Objective: Use “America’s Health 2007” to demonstrate ability to read and interpret data on a single health issue. Research and update of the topic and summarize findings.

5 points Topic
15 points Describe and interpret data from the Report.
15 points Update with appropriate sources (minimum of 3)
10 points Describe implications for public health today
5 Conclusion


INSTRUCTIONS

1. State your topic.
Why did you choose it?
What is something new you hope to learn by doing this research?

2. Describe and interpret data from Healthy People 2010 and Health: US 2008
Be sure to spend plenty of time looking the data over to detect patterns, trends, and key ideas that stand out for you.
Be sure to use socioeconomic status to breakdown the data; as well as ethnicity, gender, and age (and other relevant status markers).
What does the data say about the health problem? Put this into your own words.
What is missing, in your opinion? Groups of people, aspects of health issues that are not described by the data.

3. Do further research to update the issue.
What is the current state of this public health issue?
Be sure to research into journals and articles that describe specific aspects of the issue and give us more insight to what is going on in those areas currently.
Try to “fill the gaps” that you identified with your research.
Use at least 3 sources, no more than 8, to update. Quality, not quantity.
Remember that literature reviews are great places to find leads for research.

4. What can public health do about the issue today?
Present your own ideas
Back them up with a few citations you described earlier.

5. Conclusion
What did you hope to learn (as stated in the Introduction)?
Did you learn it? Why or why not?
If you continued to research the topic, what are a few new areas about it that you’d like to explore?


GENERAL GUIDELINES
1. Printed, preferably in Word format
2. 1 inch margins
3. 12 point font
4. Courier or Times New Roman font (not Helvetica)
5. MLA bibliographic style
6. 5 to 8 pages (not including bibliography)

DUE WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2009