What is the nature and magnitude of the problem? Who is affected by it? What are the determinants of and risk factors for the problem? What are the health, economic, and social consequences of the problem?

The policy brief assignment involves creating a policy brief from you, the Secretary of Health, to the Minister of Finance. As you write the brief, you must put yourself into the role of the Secretary of Health.

The policy brief should be three pages long not including the reference list. Half a page under the page limit is acceptable. If the paper exceeds three pages in length, it will not be graded. Since brevity and concise writing are of utmost importance in this assignment, the paper should be formatted the same as the Sample Policy Brief on UM Learn.

The policy brief should be written in a very clear, crisp manner using short sentences, short paragraphs, and as few words as possible. Each paper needs to be written in a manner that will allow the Aide of the Minister of Finance to go over the contents of the brief with the Minister in about three minutes in a car on the way to an important meeting, since that is often what happens in real life.

Ideally the policy brief should be written on a low– or middle–income country, since the poorer countries are the focus of the course. Writing the policy brief will allow students to explore selected health and development issues in a variety of settings, and in a manner much deeper than will be possible in class.

The policy brief should answer the following questions:
• What is the nature and magnitude of the problem?
• Who is affected by it?
• What are the determinants of and risk factors for the problem?
• What are the health, economic, and social consequences of the problem?
• What few priority steps do you recommend be taken to address the problem, at least cost, in doable, sustainable, and fair ways? What is your rationale for these recommendations?

Write the summary and the topic sentence as if it is the only thing that the Minister of Finance is going to read. Your evidence–based story line should include who gets the disease, why they get it, why the reader should care, and how the problem can be addressed in the fastest, least– expensive manner possible. When you make your argument, give information about the relative cost–effectiveness of your proposal with evidence.

The policy brief should follow the above outline, with one exception. It should start with a single paragraph (the “Executive Summary”) that summarizes for the Minister all the points you want to make. The summary paragraph should be several sentences long and should be single– spaced. Here is an example of a good summary paragraph:

“About XXX people die every year of TB in our country. The incidence of TB is XXX. About XXX people in our country get drug–resistant TB each year, and about XXX% of those who are
infected with HIV have active TB disease. TB affects largely the urban and rural poor and stems from poverty, general ill health, and the lack of coverage of our health services. TB causes illness for an extended period, stops people from working, causes them to spend large amounts on health, and leads many families into poverty. DOTs is a low cost approach to TB diagnosis and treatment that we are not using sufficiently. We must immediately expand our DOTs program, starting in the north, where the disease burden is highest. We must increase case detection and treatment success rates. We must also pay special attention to the diagnosis and management of drug–resistant TB and to TB/HIV co–infection.”

The paper must begin with this “one paragraph tells all” executive summary, written in single line spacing.

Topic
The policy brief will summarize, for a country of your choice, the burden of either a particular infectious disease OR a particular non–communicable disease. It will state who is most affected by this disease/condition, the key risk factors, the economic and social costs of the disease/condition, and what might be done to address the disease/condition in cost–effective ways. Note that since TB/HIV co–infection was used in the sample summary paragraph above, students may not use it as the topic of their policy brief. Similarly, since HIV/AIDS was the topic of the sample policy brief on UM Learn, that topic is off limits to students.

Submissions and Grading
You will submit your policy brief electronically to the appropriate ‘Assignments’ folder on UM Learn. Once graded, the feedback will be returned to you electronically via your UM Learn Assignments folder. Save your policy brief in the following format so that the grader–markers can easily tell who wrote them: “Your Family Name, Policy Brief.docx or .doc”

The policy brief will be graded on the basis of:
• Following the assignment guidelines
• Clarity
• The logic of the argument
• Appropriate use of evidence and data, both about your country and comparative data
• Reasonableness of your conclusions
• Formatting, grammar, spelling and flow.