Health Disparity within a Population Group
Article Critique
Directions: For this assignment, you will select and critique one article from a popular media source (e.g., newspaper, magazine, news journal, etc.) that provides information regarding a health disparity within a population group and complete the questions below. Please make sure to use complete sentences when answering each question. Make sure the health disparity is different from your research assignment. In addition, the article must have been published within the last 2 years.Health Disparity within a Population Group
1) Provide the article reference and link. (1point)
2) What health disparity is the article highlighting? (1point)
3) Why is this information newsworthy? How would it benefit the public health community? (3 points)
4) What causes and factors contributed to the health disparity? (2 points)
5) How does the health disparity affect health outcomes? (3 points)
6) Does the article make any recommendations or suggest resources that could benefit the public? If not, what suggestions or recommendations would you suggest? (2 points)Health Disparity within a Population Group
7) Was the article well-written? Justify your rationale? (3 points)
8) Did it include all pertinent information? Justify your rationale? (2 points)
9) Was there information or a perspective that the article should have included? If so, what? What else would you have like to have seen? (3 points)
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.Health Disparity within a Population Group
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument. Health Disparity within a Population Group
Health disparity populations are socially disadvantaged, and the multiple levels of discrimination they often experience mean that their characteristics and attributes differ from those of the mainstream. Programs and policies targeted at reducing health disparities or improving minority health must consider these differences.
Despite the importance of evaluating health disparities research to produce high-quality data that can guide decision-making, it is not yet a customary practice. Although health disparities evaluations incorporate the same scientific methods as all evaluations, they have unique components such as population characteristics, sociocultural context, and the lack of health disparity common indicators and metrics that must be considered in every phase of the research.
This article describes evaluation strategies grouped into 3 components: formative (needs assessments and process), design and methodology (multilevel designs used in real-world settings), and summative (outcomes, impacts, and cost). Each section will describe the standards for each component, discuss the unique health disparity aspects, and provide strategies from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities Metrics and Measures Visioning Workshop (April 2016) to advance the evaluation of health disparities research. Health Disparity within a Population Group
Disparities in health among different populations account for substantial preventable morbidity and mortality, both nationally and internationally. Research in this area mostly has focused on identifying differences in health and on improving our knowledge of factors that contribute to disparities, with the hope of discovering interventions that will reduce them. Public Law 106-525(d) mandates that health disparities populations include minority groups, as defined by the Office of Management and Budget, as well as rural location populations, those of low socioeconomic status, and sexual or gender minorities.1 Increasingly, research funders are emphasizing that the relevance of minority health and health disparities programs and public policies must be demonstrated to promote good population health and to justify program investments.2,3 However, health research is expensive, and public expenditures supporting health research and health care are receiving increasingly close scrutiny. This heightened level of attention and debate requires that research identify not only health benefits but also social and economic impacts, which requires methodologies based on good evaluation techniques.
During April 2016, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) convened a workshop on Methods and Measurement Science for Health Disparities to help inform strategic planning for the Institute. The evaluation of health disparities research was an important topic of the visioning workshop. Invited experts agreed that few evaluations were conducted as part of health disparities research, and this needed to be rectified. A conclusion from this workshop was that incorporating evaluation in health disparities research is needed to amass a rich evidence-based portfolio of interventions that can inform policy making activities, as well as to justify program investments and substantiate their utility. Health Disparity within a Population Group
Health disparity populations and health disparities research present unique challenges to traditional evaluation because of the population characteristics, sociocultural context, and nascence of the field. Differences between health disparity populations and the “mainstream population” often result from social disadvantage, experience of discrimination through “isms” (e.g., sexism or racism), unique cultural practices, enclaves of living, and difficulty with established societal structures and bureaucracies. In addition, differences often depend on the degree of acculturation of the health disparities population into mainstream society.4 Therefore, evaluations must consider related population characteristics and sociocultural environments, but these considerations challenge the use of traditional or mainstream interpretations of standard evaluation techniques because of the implications of being a socially disadvantaged population.
A paramount consideration in health disparities research evaluations is to do no harm to the populations involved. Mainstream biases can lead to misinterpretation of results and questions about the quality and efficiency of a process, product, or outcome.5 Such effects can cause harm to the study population. For example, in a condom use study, Hispanic adolescents were declared less likely to use condoms during sexual activity when an evaluation of the project concluded that the adolescents did not use condoms because they were not having sex.6 The harm of promiscuity was not acknowledged by the evaluation. Population and sociocultural context must be at the forefront of every stage of the evaluation to ensure that appropriate results are given to decision-makers. Health Disparity within a Population Group
The field of health disparities research is maturing into a discipline, especially with the emergence of new definitions and better understanding of health determinants and relevant outcomes.6 Using findings from multiple disciplines, investigators are showing how health determinants contribute to health disparities at multiple domains of influence, with effects ranging from the individual level to the systemic. Examining the relationship of these factors has become the focus of health disparity etiology and intervention research. However, appropriate methodologies for evaluation in applied or real-world settings have not been commonly implemented and must be adopted.
Rossi et al. have defined program evaluation as the systematic application of scientific methods to assess the need, implementation, design, outcomes, and costs of a program.7 Key steps of an effective evaluation originate from their evaluation hierarchy, a well-known conceptual tool that identifies 5 sequential stages of a project. The 5 levels are the evaluation of project Health Disparity within a Population Group