Assignment: Agenda Comparison Grid

Assignment: Agenda Comparison Grid and Fact Sheet or Talking Points Brief

Healthcare may appear to you to be a national topic of debate among political leaders for as long as you can remember.

Healthcare has been a policy issue and a source of contention not only recently, but since the administration of the second President of the United States, John Adams. In 1798, Adams signed legislation requiring sailors to set aside 20 cents per month of their pay to cover medical expenses. This was the first major piece of healthcare legislation in the United States, and the topic of healthcare has been woven into presidential agendas and political debates ever since.

As a healthcare professional, you may be asked to provide expertise, guidance, and/or opinions on healthcare issues that are being debated for inclusion in new

policy. You may also be involved in the development of new organizational policies and responses to legislative changes. For all of these reasons, you should be prepared to discuss national healthcare issues that are making headlines. Assignment: Agenda Comparison Grid

You will examine recent presidential healthcare agendas in this Assignment. You will also create a fact sheet to communicate the significance of a healthcare issue and the impact of recent or proposed policy on this issue. Assignment: Agenda Comparison Grid

To Prepare:

Review the agenda priorities of the current/sitting U.S. president and the two previous presidential administrations.

Select an issue related to healthcare that was addressed by each of the last three U.S. presidential administrations.

Reflect on the focus of their respective agendas, including the allocation of financial resources for addressing the healthcare issue you selected.

Consider how you would communicate the importance of a healthcare issue to a legislator/policymaker or a member of their staff for inclusion on an agenda.

The Assignment: (1- to 2-page Comparison Grid, 1-Page Analysis, and 1-page Fact Sheet)

Part 1: Agenda Comparison Grid

Use the Agenda Comparison Grid Template found in the Learning Resources and complete the Part 1: Agenda Comparison Grid based on the current/sitting U.S. president and the two previous presidential administrations and their agendas related to the public health concern you selected. Be sure to address the following:

Identify and provide a brief description of the population health concern you selected and the factors that contribute to it.

Describe the administrative agenda focus related to the issue you selected.

Identify the allocations of financial and other resources that the current and two previous presidents dedicated to this issue. Assignment: Agenda Comparison Grid

Explain how each of the presidential administrations approached the issue.Assignment: Agenda Comparison Grid

(A draft of Part 1: Agenda Comparison Grid should be posted to the Module 1 Discussion Board by Day 3 of Week 1.)

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Agenda Comparison Grid Assignment Template for Part 1 and Part 2

Different presidents have different agendas on health care issues and concerns when they are elected into the Oval Office. These concerns become presidential agendas because of their effects on public health and individual’s wellbeing. The opioid crisis remains a national public health concern with presidents making it part of their presidential agendas and seeking Americans’ support to tackle it. Positioning the opioid crisis as a presidential agenda is essential in getting solutions to issue because of its devastating effects on health outcomes and quality of life (Robeznieks, 2021). The essence of this comparison grid is to compare how current and previous administrations have handled the Opioid crisis. The paper in its three parts discusses the concern and offers analysis and a brief its significance and the role of nurses in setting agenda for healthcare issues. Use this Agenda Comparison Grid to document information about the population health/healthcare issue you selected

Part 1: Agenda Comparison Grid

Identify the Population Health concern you selected.	The population health issue selected is the Opioid Crisis and Overdose.
Describe the Population Health concern you selected.	Opioid abuse or addiction occurs due to the use of prescription drugs, non-prescription drugs and outlawed substances or illegal drugs. The Center for Disease Control and Prevent asserts that the epidemic leads to catastrophic impacts on individuals, neighborhoods and communities. These effects include substance use disorder, mental health issues and mortality that may happen due to overdosing of the drugs. For instance, in 2016 Opioid overdose caused over 46,000 deaths. Recent statistics show that close to 90,000 overdose fatalities occurred between 2019 and 2020 President Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency. The National Institute of Health (NIH) asserts that the crisis costs the economy over $78 billion each year due to expenses related to treatment, healthcare costs, criminal involvement and rehabilitation as well as time lost by the most affected individuals. Federal departments and agencies have dedicated resources and strategies to tackle the epidemic. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) launched a 5-point strategy focused on empowering communities to tackle the opioid epidemic with the aim of reducing morbidity and mortality.
Administration (President Name)	Current President  President Joe Biden	Previous Present  President Donald Trump	Previous President  President Barack Obama
Explain how each of the two presidential administrations approached the issue.	The current Biden administration focuses on ensuring that people have access to high quality health care that comprises of substance use disorder treatment and mental health services. Through efforts to expand insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, the Biden administration is keen on expanding Medicaid for mental health and substance use disorder services (Robeznieks, 2021). The administration has also boosted access to overdose treatment and prevention	President Trump make efforts to tackle the problem by increasing border patrols through his agenda of building a wall on the border with Mexico to control the trafficking of drugs. The seizure of heroin and trafficking arrests that doubled between 2007 and 2017 are some of the continual efforts by the president Trump to deal with the crisis.  Efforts by the administration also include introduction of new limits on opioid prescriptions through the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines (Frank & Haffjee, 2019). Under his administration, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) introduced pharmaceutical companies to minimize their production of certain opioids like morphine and fentanyl. The Justice Department also ramped up its efforts to prosecute those involved in trafficking and over prescription of drugs. It is important to note that the Trump Administration declared the opioid epidemic as a national health emergency.	The Obama administration focused on efforts to create and develop programs like monitoring of prescription, drug take-back at local police stations and pharmacies within the community. The administration enhanced programs to rehabilitate and treat individuals battling actions. The rolling out of the Affordable Care Act was a critical step in enhancing access to healthcare, including mental health for millions of Americans and their families battling the opioid epidemic. Obama also signed the Bipartisan Bill to Combat Opioid Epidemic in 2016. The bill aimed at offering a multifaceted approach to dealing with the epidemic and enhancing access to effective treatment.
Identify the allocations of resources that the current and previous presidents dedicated to this issue.	The Biden administration has proposed to allocate or spend about $125 billion to tackle the crisis (Ellerbeck, 2020). The resources will focus on developing prevention programs, treatment and recovery effort.	The Trump administration allocated over $13 billion to assist law enforcement to initiate several novel initiatives to respond to the crisis. The administration made an addition allocation of 1.6 billion to 12 states and 13 counties with high drug abuse cases (Frank & Haffjee, 2019). The administration also outlined 21 billion for infrastructure and $23 billion to enhance border security, including the construction of the border wall. Assignment: Agenda Comparison Grid	The Obama administration allocated close to $28 billion to support efforts to control drug trafficking and other activities like treatment and creating awareness.
Explain how each of  the presidential administrations approached the issue.	The Biden administration’s main approach is to allocate more resources to battle the epidemic amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic. The administration is also keen restructuring the criminal justice system to ensure that no individual is jailed due to drug use alone (Ellerbeck, 2020). The administration is also keen on holding big Pharmaceuticals responsible for the over-prescription of opioids.	The main approach of the administration on the issue was to enhance border security and have stricter indictment using the Justice Department for drug dealers. The administration also enacted a Safer Prescribing Initiative to reduce opioid prescription fills by over one-third.	The primary approach to dealing with the crisis was expansion of health access through the Affordable Care Act. Enforcement efforts targeted illegal opioid supply chain, stopping physician-shopping attempts and having experts to offer guidance.

 

Part 3: Fact Sheet or Talking Points Brief

Based on the feedback that you received from your colleagues in the Discussion, revise Part 1: Agenda Comparison Grid and Part 2: Agenda Comparison Grid Analysis.

Then, using the information recorded on the template in Parts 1 and 2, develop a 1-page Fact Sheet or Talking Points Brief that you could use to communicate with a policymaker/legislator or a member of their staff for this healthcare issue. You can use Microsoft Word or PowerPoint to create your Fact Sheet or Talking Point Brief. Be sure to address the following:

Summarize why this healthcare issue is important and should be included in the agenda for legislation.

Justify the role of the nurse in agenda setting for healthcare issues.

 

Important:

*******The response needs to fully integrate at least 2 outside resources and 2-3 course specific resources that fully supports the summary provided. I would recommend combining your Agenda Grid Comparison and Fact Sheet together in one document. If you upload separately, be sure to attach to the assignment link at the same time********

***Final Agenda Grid Comparison, Analysis, and Fact Sheet Required References****

Be sure to answer all the questions associated with the Agenda Comparison Grid for your final assignment:

-Identify which administrative agency would most likely be responsible for helping you address the -healthcare issue you selected.

-How does the healthcare issue get on the agenda and how does it stay there?

-Who was the entrepreneur/champion/sponsor of the healthcare issue you selected?

Setting the Agenda Program Transcript

FEMALE SPEAKER: How do you get a policymaker’s attention? It’s very simple. You develop a relationship with that person. Don’t wait until you need something. Develop the relationship early on.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

FEMALE SPEAKER: Sometimes it’s difficult to get issues on the agenda that are our issues, that might be an issue that’s of interest to a nurse, if it doesn’t align with the interests and the priorities of that elected official. So it’s really important to know what their priorities are, what their health issues are that they’re most interested in. You can usually Google their name. You can get their official bios. You can read about the committees that they serve on and the issues that matter to them. And look to see whether or not their agenda matches with yours, or if there’s a way you can leverage your issue into their agenda. Assignment: Agenda Comparison Grid

FEMALE SPEAKER: Know exactly what the congressional members have on their agenda. And you can get them online, through their local office, or through their congressional office in Washington, DC. Find out what they’re interested in. Find out how you can help them. You need to call them up, or you need to go visit the office and find out exactly what is being done.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Call up a state senator and say, I am so-and-so. I would like to meet with you. I’m a registered nurse. And I think I may have something that you might be interested to talk about.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Do the homework you need to do to get up to speed, not just on the issue and a potential solution you may be advocating, but also their background so that you can calibrate your conversation with them in ways that will resonate for them, that they’ll understand and appreciate.

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FEMALE SPEAKER: It’s often helpful to have what is known as a policy entrepreneur. That’s a big word that simply says, do you have anybody who’s on your side or who’s really interested or who can continue to work with your policymaker when you’re out doing your own practice. It could be a retired legislator. It could be a current legislator, someone who’s willing to support a bill and then could perhaps introduce your bill, because only legislators can introduce bills. The president cannot, the governor cannot. That’s the purview of the General Assembly or the Congress.

FEMALE SPEAKER: People want to hear from their constituents. Ideally, you are communicating with the people who represent you. So that’s almost always the first place to start, your elected official, not the one two states over. That might be appealing, because you know their name from national news. And you certainly can communicate to them. But the voices that often matter the most, I’ve found, are the voices from local communities back home in the district or the state that that Senator or Congressman or state legislator represents.

 

FEMALE SPEAKER: You have to make sure that you are in it for the long run. These kinds of political processes and policy issues may take years. So you say, oh, my gosh, are you on this forever. Sometimes it seems like it. It may take one session of two years. It may take two. It may take five sessions. But if it’s important enough to you, you need to go.

 

FEMALE SPEAKER: This particular meeting with the president was my coming over to the White House, because he’d asked me to meet with him. And he started by saying, Mary, I want to thank you for. And I did what people probably never should do and that my mother would have been very unhappy about my having done, I interrupted the President of the United States. And I did that because I thought I had something more important as a nurse to tell him than he had to tell me.

 

So I had hijacked that meeting with him. And given that feedback, very quickly went through those programs that I thought were important for him to hear about, told him the impact, speaking as quickly as I am right now to convey that message. There is information that nurses are uniquely positioned, because of our expertise and our practice, to inform the work of policymakers. And you don’t ever want to lose that opportunity to do just that, even when you’re talking to the President of the United States.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Setting the Agenda

Additional Content Attribution

Trowell‐Harris, I. (n.d.). Various Photographs [Photograph]. Used with permission of Irene Trowell-Harris.

Wakefield, M. (n.d.). [Photograph]. Used with permission og Mary Wakefield WAL_NURS6050_NIH-SenatorDanielInouye

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

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.

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. Assignment: Agenda Comparison Grid