Health Policy, Politics, and Perspectives

Guidelines for the Field Experience Requirement

You must “attend” at least 4 policy events, at least approximately 1 hour in length. Attendance of at least one of these events must be in-person.

Up to 3 of the 4 events may be online and they must have a health policy focus. Online health policy events/ webinars will be posted from which you may choose. In addition, you may identify your own online policy events, but please check with your instructor to make sure the events you choose are eligible for field hours.

The in-person event should cover policy discussion and present different perspectives. An example of an in-person event would be attendance at a local board of health meeting, a local school-board meeting, a legislative hearing or meeting, a meeting by an executive branch agency that falls under your governor, a meeting by advocacy organization or special interest group, or a meetings of a political party, political group, or candidate.

General Guidelines

1. At each event, take notes, and then write up an account and analysis of each event, using the template for field experience logs (below), and the Field Experience Rubric posted on Moodle.
2. You are required to complete and post a field event report assignment every other week, in Weeks 2, 4, 6, and 8.

Field Log Guidelines

As a way of demonstrating completion of this course requirement, you must submit, in writing, field logs that detail certain aspects of the event. The template for field experience logs is below.

• Each event log should be three to five double-spaced pages of text.
• Provide only a brief summary of the event itself.
• The analysis section should be 550 to 800 words, and be the most developed component of the report. In the analysis section, you can write about the process of policy being made at this event, and/or you can write about the actual health policy issue being discussed/considered.
• Your analysis should reference at least two sources. They can be from the learning materials in this course or other sources, but should be current (within the last 3 months).
• Use APA format for citations and references.
• Examples of logs are posted on Moodle.

Template for Field Experience Logs

• The name of the event/meeting and who has sponsored it.
• Describe the steps taken in preparation for the event (beyond listening or attending the event).
• Place, date, time, and length of hearing/meeting/event.
• Topic under discussion.
• Names of participants and their titles (to the extent you can get them).
• Brief description of the testimony/meeting/event. (If more than one issue is presented, discuss a sampling of issues.)
• Analysis of the health policy issue and its implications for healthcare. Integrate course content and readings in your analysis. This section should be approximately 500 to 750 words.