Paper on Policy Analysis within Healthcare

Paper on Policy Analysis within Healthcare

Policy analysis is an analysis that provides informed advice to a  client that relates to a public policy decision, includes a recommended  course of action or inaction. There are five steps in writing a policy  analysis. A policy analysis can be utilized to identify a policy  problem. Policy analysis has many purposes. Answer the following  questions:

• Explain policy analysis and its three purposes.
• Briefly evaluate the five steps in the health policy analysis process.
• Explain the process of writing each step in detail.
• For each step, evaluate which part of the process is the most important. Why?
• Which step do you think is the most important and why? Explain which step in the process was the most difficult to write. Why?
• Identify two states and evaluate three differences between their  policy-making or law-making processes. Explain how those differences may  impact the processes.
• Explain three similarities in the policy-making or law-making processes of state and Federal Governments.

Important information for writing discussion questions and participation

Welcome to class

Hello class and welcome to the class and I will be your instructor for this course. This is a -week course and requires a lot of time commitment, organization, and a high level of dedication. Please use the class syllabus to guide you through all the assignments required for the course. I have also attached the classroom policies to this announcement to know your expectations for this course. Please review this document carefully and ask me any questions if you do. You could email me at any time or send me a message via the “message” icon in halo if you need to contact me. I check my email regularly, so you should get a response within 24 hours. If you have not heard from me within 24 hours and need to contact me urgently, please send a follow up text to

I strongly encourage that you do not wait until the very last minute to complete your assignments. Your assignments in weeks 4 and 5 require early planning as you would need to present a teaching plan and interview a community health provider. I advise you look at the requirements for these assignments at the beginning of the course and plan accordingly. I have posted the YouTube link that explains all the class assignments in detail. It is required that you watch this 32-minute video as the assignments from week 3 through 5 require that you follow the instructions to the letter to succeed. Failure to complete these assignments according to instructions might lead to a zero. After watching the video, please schedule a one-on-one with me to discuss your topic for your project by the second week of class. Use this link to schedule a 15-minute session. Please, call me at the time of your appointment on my number. Please note that I will NOT call you.

Please, be advised I do NOT accept any assignments by email. If you are having technical issues with uploading an assignment, contact the technical department and inform me of the issue. If you have any issues that would prevent you from getting your assignments to me by the deadline, please inform me to request a possible extension. Note that working fulltime or overtime is no excuse for late assignments. There is a 5%-point deduction for every day your assignment is late. This only applies to approved extensions. Late assignments will not be accepted.

If you think you would be needing accommodations due to any reasons, please contact the appropriate department to request accommodations.

Plagiarism is highly prohibited. Please ensure you are citing your sources correctly using APA 7th edition. All assignments including discussion posts should be formatted in APA with the appropriate spacing, font, margin, and indents. Any papers not well formatted would be returned back to you, hence, I advise you review APA formatting style. I have attached a sample paper in APA format and will also post sample discussion responses in subsequent announcements.

Your initial discussion post should be a minimum of 200 words and response posts should be a minimum of 150 words. Be advised that I grade based on quality and not necessarily the number of words you post. A minimum of TWO references should be used for your initial post. For your response post, you do not need references as personal experiences would count as response posts. If you however cite anything from the literature for your response post, it is required that you cite your reference. You should include a minimum of THREE references for papers in this course. Please note that references should be no more than 5 years old except recommended as a resource for the class. Furthermore, for each discussion board question, you need ONE initial substantive response and TWO substantive responses to either your classmates or your instructor for a total of THREE responses. There are TWO discussion questions each week, hence, you need a total minimum of SIX discussion posts for each week. I usually post a discussion question each week. You could also respond to these as it would count towards your required SIX discussion posts for the week.

I understand this is a lot of information to cover in 5 weeks, however, the Bible says in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us. Even in times like this, we are encouraged by God’s word that we have that ability in us to succeed with His strength. I pray that each and every one of you receives strength for this course and life generally as we navigate through this pandemic that is shaking our world today. Relax and enjoy the course!

Hi Class,

Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts.

Contact me if you have any questions.

Important information on Writing a Discussion Question

• Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references)
• There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article.
• Include in-text citations in your response
• Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information
• Follow APA-7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed

Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor

• A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week.
• Each response needs at least ONE reference with citations—best if it is a peer reviewed journal article
• Each response needs to be at least 75 words in length (does not include your list of references)
• Responses need to be substantive by bringing information to the discussion or further enhance the discussion. Responses of “I agree” or “great post” does not count for the word count.
• Follow APA 7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed

• Remember to use and follow APA-7th edition for all weekly assignments, discussion questions, and participation points.
• Here are some helpful links
• The is a great resource

Health policy analysis is a multi-disciplinary approach to public policy that aims to explain the interaction between institutions, interests and ideas in the policy process. It is useful both retrospectively and prospectively, to understand past policy failures and successes and to plan for future policy implementation. The case for undertaking policy analysis has been made by a number of scholars (Parsons 1995) and 15 years ago, in this journal, Walt and Gilson (1994) argued it was central to health reforms. However,

there has been much less attention given to how to do policy analysis, what research designs, theories or methods best inform policy analysis. Reich and Cooper (1996) designed and have updated a software tool to help researchers and policy-makers analyse the political dimensions of public policies. Others, such as Varvasovszky and Brugha (2000), have designed guidelines for undertaking stakeholder analysis, as a part of health policy analysis. Bossert (1998) developed an approach to analyse choices for the decentralization of health sectors. Sabatier (1999, 2007) has explored different theoretical frameworks of the policy process (although not focusing on health). However, it is rare to find any scholarly work that explicitly explores the methodological challenges for researchers studying the health policy process.

This paper takes off from the conclusions drawn in the literature review by Gilson and Raphaely (2008, this issue), which identifies some of the gaps and weaknesses in the field of health policy analysis in low and middle income countries. The review notes the absence of explicit conceptual frameworks, little detail on research design and methodology, and a preponderance of single case studies on particular issues. It draws attention to the limited use of relevant theory to underpin analysis and the paucity of attempts to provide an explicit, explanatory focus. As the authors say, the main question is often ‘what happened’, to the neglect of ‘what explains what happened’. Researchers also rarely reflect on how their own positions shape their research interpretations and conclusions.

In this paper, we tackle some of these issues, looking at some of the reasons for the above deficiencies identified in the Gilson and Raphaely review, and make some suggestions for advancing the field.

First, to put the paper in context we begin by looking at the health policy environment, and some of the challenges to researching this highly complex phenomenon. Second, we argue for more attention to theory and frameworks and we consider the theoretical constructs often utilized in health policy studies. From there we move to methodology and study design, exploring the implications of case study research and temporality for health policy analysis; and then discuss the roles of the policy researcher, the importance of reflexivity and researcher positionality in the research process. The final section explores ways of advancing the field of health policy analysis.