15 May HLTH 355: Addressing Health Disparities through Social Justice

HLTH 355: Addressing Health Disparities through Social Justice

Paper One Assignment

Due 4/10/20 by Midnight

Assignment: In both of the book club books, marginalized populations face situations that impact their health and overall population health. Using specific evidence from your book club book and the Healthy People 2020 website, write a 4-5-page essay in which you make an argument calling for more public health attention to be placed on one specific social determinant of health. You should write your essay as if public health professionals will be reading it (i.e., public health professionals are your audience). Your goal is to (a) illustrate the complexity of the social determinant and (b) explain how this social determinant affects population health.

Method: In order to develop this essay, you must engage in a critical conversation with the book that you read. First, provide a two-page summary of the book with enough detail for someone who has never read the book. You will need to explicitly state the main themes or lessons from each section of the book and provide specific examples.

Second, write 2-3 pages detailing your argument that one specific social determinant should be given more attention in public health efforts targeting your book’s main population (in $2 a Day that population is people living in poverty; in Dopesick that population is communities struggling with opioid addiction). When developing your argument, you will necessarily draw upon the situations of the individuals in your book and also the concepts and evidence from Healthy People 2020. You must show how you are building upon, altering, or challenging the book author’s presentation of information through your quotation, analysis, and comparison of their examples and evidence compared to that provided by Healthy People 2020.

Social Determinants: You can choose to focus on one of any of the following social determinants.

· How a person develops during the first few years of life (early childhood development)

· How much and the quality of education a person obtains

· Being able to get and keep a job

· What kind of work a person does (occupation and work conditions)

· Having food or being able to get food (food security)

· Access to health services and the quality of those services

· Housing stability and quality

· Exposure to toxins and other health risks in the environment

· Neighborhood quality

· Discrimination

· Having a support system to fall back on

· Being welcomed into and able to use local community resources (social exclusion)

Technical Requirements (Part of your grade)

All papers should be typed and have a cover page. Papers should be in Arial or Times New Roman 11-point font, double-spaced, with 1″ margins. Every paper should have citations in the text, a reference section at the end, and you should use APA style. You should submit a Microsoft Word document or Adobe pdf.

You are expected to submit college-level writing. Be sure to edit your paper. Consider making an appointment with the Center for Writing Excellence now (i.e., make the appointment for a few days before the assignment is due) if you think you may need help formatting or editing your paper. The Center for Writing Excellence has in-person and online appointments.

Click here to schedule an appointment with the Center for Writing Excellence.