A health policy analysis requires succinct consideration of policy options for a particular audience (e.g. officials, bureaucrats, politicians, development practitioners, donors).  This means that the format will be different from a conventional paper.  Some might say that a policy brief is more professional because it is geared towards readers who have a limited amount of time to make a practical decision, while a research paper is more academic because it pays more attention to the scholarly roots of particular arguments.

You must refer to Chapter 14 in the text.  The Health Policy Analysis should be about 8 pages in length (excluding the cover page,, abstract and the reference page.) Topic will be Vaping, Should Congress mandate that all vaping devices removed from the shelves to help prevent further damage to American citizens?

NOTE:  You MUST include a separate heading for each of the 6 sections listed below!

Components of a health policy analysis:
Review the Checklist for Writing a Policy Analysis , Chapter 14 -p. 329.

    Please include the headings below for each section

1.    Statement of the Issue/Problem:  This should be a short summary of the purpose of the brief and its recommendations.  Indicate in an additional sentence or two the audience for whom this brief is intended, e.g. a particular Non-Governmental Agency (NGO), government agency, legislator/politician, branch of an international organization.  Be specific as possible.

Phrase the topic as a question that requires a decision.  This can be as short as one question or two.

2.    Background (of the problem):  Include only the essential facts that a decision maker needs to know to understand the context of the problem.  Assume that you have been hired to filter through reams of information on behalf of a very busy and sleep-deprived person.  Be clear, concise and succinct.
3.    Statement of your organizations interests in the issue:  This is meant to remind the reader of why the issue matters for the coutry/group/organization that you are advising.

4.    Pre-existing policies:  This summarizes what has been done (by others and the entity you represent) about the problem thus far.  Depending on your topic, some of the information may have already been presented in the Background section.  The objective of this section is to inform the reader of policy options that have already been pursued, if any.  Note the absence of action may be considered a policy decision.

5.    Policy options:  This section delineates the possible courses of action or inaction that your organization may pursue.  Please provide the decision maker with at least three courses of action.  Some of them may be wildly unrealistic in your opinion, but please pose them aw policy options nonetheless.  At the same time, it would not be prudent to overwhelm the decision maker with your many choices.

6.    Advantages and disadvantages of each Policy Option: Write this section from the perspective of the entity that you represent.  For clarity, you may present the pros and the cons of the options in bullet points or outline format.  This may seem like stacking the deck since some options may have only one advantage and several downsides, but not always that obvious.

Grading criteria:

Introduction and statement of the Issue/Problem                10%
Background (of the problem)                        15%
Landscape                                    10%
Statement of your organizations interest in the issue                  10%
          Pre-existing policies
Policy options                                    15%
Recommendations                                 20%   
Advantages and Disadvantages of each policy option
Final Conclusion/Final Recommendations                    10%
APA format                                    10%

NOTE: 
    You MUST include the headings for each section of the paper as listed in the grading criteria.
    You must include a minimum of 8 reference sources.
    Wikipedia, Dictionaries and Encyclopedias are NOT accepted as reference sources.
    All papers MUST be submitted using Safe Assign.