Download my Fall 2020 syllabus

Course Description

The global COVID-19 pandemic has turned everyone’s attention to the ramifications of our health policy choices. It is, however, important to recognize the long struggle over health policy in the United States. This course will help students understand how historical political dynamics and policy choices affect the structure and differential outcomes of our health system today. This will be achieved through a combination of learning historical context and exploring present debates. Since this is a capstone policy seminar, I use a democratic classroom where students are partners in developing the course and its assessments. We will spend time during the first week of the course fleshing out our expectations of each other and the course. This will included negotiating a grading contract. In addition to learning this content, students will learn and apply policy analysis techniques to a health policy problem of their choosing. Students will have the option of pursuing publication of their analyses, if they desire.

Course Schedule

Week 1: Introductions

• August 25: Introduction to the course and each other (Slides)
  
• August 27: Grading Contract and Course Topics Negotiation
  • Please contribute to the list of potential topics and read the draft grading contract before class. Both are on Teams.
• August 29: Regular Drop Deadline

Week 2: History and Analysis

• September 1: Reform History (Slides)
  
  • Tunsall, Lee. 2015. “Backgrounder: Making Sense of the U.S. Health Care System: A Primer.” Evidence Network.
  • Kaiser Family Foundation. 2011. “Timeline: History of Health Reform in the U.S.“
  • Additional recommended reading: Kaiser Family Foundation. 2009. “National Health Insurance – A Brief History of Reform Efforts in the U.S.“
• September 3: Policy Feedback (Slides)
  
  • Mettler, Suzanne and Mallory SoRelle. 2018. “Policy Feedback Theory.” In Theories of the Policy Process, Christopher M. Weible and Paul A. Sabatier (eds.). Fourth Edition. New York: Westview Press. (Copy on Canvas)
    

Week 3: Policy Analysis Tools

• September 8: Policy Analysis and Ethics (Slides)
  
  • Weimer and Vining. Chapters 2 and 3
    
• September 10: Getting Started (Slides)
  
  • Weimer and Vining. Chapter 14-16
    
  • Analysis Teams and Topic Due
• September 10: So You Want to Learn More About COVID-19
  • Library event on scientific research and COVID
  • 11:30 am
  • Registration link: https://bit.ly/2YG2rNz

Week 4: Policy Analysis Tools

• September 15: Cost-Benefit Analysis (Slides)
  
  • Weimer and Vining. Chapter 17
• September 17: Public Agency Strategic Analysis (Slides)
  
  • Weimer and Vining. Chapter 18

Week 5: Healthcare Around the World and Administration

• September 22: Healthcare Around the World
  
  • Wendt, Claus, Lorraine Frisina, and Heinz Rothgang. 2009. “Healthcare System Types: A Conceptual Framework for Comparison.” Social Policy & Administration 43(1): 70-90.
  • Papanicolas, Irene, Liana R. Woskie, and Anish K. Jah. 2018. “Health Care Spending in the United States and Other High-Income Countries.” JAMA 319(10): 1024-1039.
  • Listen to Knotts, Brittany and Meghna Chakrabarti. 2020. “‘Our Malady’: Historian Timothy Snyder on America’s Health Care Problem.” On Point. WBUR. September 8.
    
  • Slaybaugh, Chris. 2017. “International Healthcare Systems: The US vs. the World.”
• September 23: Public Health Forum
  • Noon – 1pm
  • See the flyer for Zoom details
• September 24: Healthcare IT Event
  • Noon to 1pm
  • Zoom Link
• September 24: Healthcare Administration (Slides)
  
  • Adler-Milstein, Julia and David W. Bates. 2010. “Paperless Healthcare: Progress and Challenges of an IT-Enabled Healthcare System.” Business Horizons 53(2): 119-130.
    
  • Casola, Valentina, Aniello Castiglione, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, and Christian Esposito. 2016. “Healthcare-Related Data in the Cloud: Challenges and Opportunities.” IEEE Cloud Computing 3(6): 10-14.
  • Analysis Outline and Sources Due

Week 6: Costs and Market Failure

• September 29: Costs of Healthcare (Slides)
  
  • Tolbert, Jennifer, Maria Diaz, Cornelia Hall, and Salem Mengistu. 2019. “State Actions to Improve the Affordability of Health Insurance in the Individual Market.” Kaiser Family Foundation.
  • Harrington, Scott E. 2010. “The Health Insurance Reform Debate.” Journal of Risk and Insurance 77(1): 5-38.
  • Rovner, Julie. 2020. “A Guide to Following the Health Debate in the 2020 Elections.” Kaiser Health News. January 30.
  • NHPR. 2020. “Heart Disease Bankrupted Him Once. Now He Faces Another $10,000 Medical Bill.”
• October 1: Market Failure (Slides)
  
  • Weimer and Vining. Chapters 4-6

Week 7: Peer Review and Other Policy Goals

• October 6: Writing a Peer Review (Slides)
  
  • A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing a Peer Review
• October 8: Research Day
  • Not meeting in class, but I’ll be available on Zoom

Week 8: Other Policy Goals and Government Failure

• October 13: Other Policy Goals (Slides)
  
  • Weimer and Vining. Chapter 7
    • Analysis Rough Draft Due
• October 15: Governmental Failure (Slides)
  
  • Weimer and Vining. Chapter 8
    

Week 9: Economic Inequality

• October 20: Social Determinants of Health, Disparity in Access (Slides)
  
  • Haeder, Simon F. 2020. “Inadequate in the Best of Times: Reevaluating Provider Networks in Light of the Coronavirus Pandemic.” World Medical and Health Policy. Forthcoming.
  • Melton-Fant, Courtnee. 2020. “Relationship Between State Preemption of Inclusionary Zoning Policies and Health Outcomes: Is There Disparate Impact Among People of Color?” Housing Policy Debate. Forthcoming.
  • Peer Review 1 Due
• October 22: Public Programs: Medicare and Medicaid (Slides)
  
  • Herd, Pamela and Donald Moynihan. 2020. “Administrative Burdens in Health Policy.” Journal of Health and Human Services Administration 43(1): 3-16.
  • Ward, Bryce. 2020. “The Impact of Medicaid Expansion on States’ Budgets.” Issue Brief. The Commonwealth Fund. May.
  • Cubanski, Juliette, Tricia Neuman, and Meredith Freed. 2019. “The Facts on Medicare Spending and Financing.” The Kaiser Family Foundation. August.
  • NPR. 2020. “How Expanded Medicaid Could Improve Food Security.” September 27.

Week 10: Burnout and Race

• October 27: Caregiver Burnout (Slides)
  
  • White, Elizabeth M., Linda H. Aiken, and Matthew D. McHugh. 2019. “Registered Nurse Burnout, Job Dissatisfaction, and Missed Care in Nursing Homes.” Journal of American Geriatrics Society 67(10): 2065-2071.
  • Lemaire, Jane B. and Jean E. Wallace. 2017. “Burnout Among Doctors.” BMJ 358: j3360.
  • Weng, Hui-Ching, Chao-Ming Hung, T-Tien Liu, Yu-Jen Cheng, Cheng-Yo Yen, Chi-Chang Chang, Chih-Kun Huang. 2011. “Associations Between Emotional Intelligence and Doctor Burnout, Job Satisfaction and Patient Satisfaction.” Medical Education 45: 835-842.
• October 29: PUBPL/PLSC Open House
  • For all current and interested students!
  • 11:30 am – 12:30 pm on Zoom
• October 29: Catch  up on Medicare and Medicaid (Slides)

Week 11: Race

• November 3: Project Workday
  
  • I’ll be available on Zoom from 3-5pm
  • VOTE!
• November 5: Racism in Healthcarem (Slides)
  
  • Christiani, Leah, Christopher Clark, Steven Greene, Marc Hetherington, and Emily Wager. Working Paper. “Masks and Racial Stereotypes in a Pandemic: The Case for Surgical Masks.” (June 29, 2020).
  • Woo Kim, Jin, Evan Morgan, and Brendan Nyhan. 2020. “Treatment versus Punishment: Understanding Racial Inequalities in Drug Policy.” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 45(2): 177-209.
    
  • Washington, Harriet A. “Introduction.” Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to Present Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. (See Canvas)

Week 12: Mental Health and Gender Bias

• November 10: Mental Health (Slides)
  
  • Syme, Kristen L. and Edward H. Hagen. 2020. “Mental Health is Biological Health: Why Tackling ‘Diseases if the Mind’ is an Imperative for Biological Anthropology in the 21st Century.” Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 171(Suppl. 70): 87-117.
    
  • Bor, Jacob, Atheendar S. Venkataramani, David R. Williams, and Alexander C. Tsai. 2018. “Police Killings and Their Spillover Effects on the Mental Health of Black Americans: A Population-Based, Quasi-Experimental Study.” The Lancet 392(10144): 302-310.
  • Barry, Colleen L., Howard H. Goldman, and Haiden A. Huskamp. 2016. “Federal Parity in the Evolving Mental Health and Addiction Care Landscape.” Health Affairs 35(6): 1009-1016.
  • Rough Draft 2 Due
• November 12: Contraception and Abortion – Asynchronous Discussion on Canvas
  
  • Power to Decide. “Birth Control Access” and “Understanding Contraceptive Deserts” (See Canvas)
  • Sawhill, Isabel V. and Katherine Guyot. 2019. “Preventing Unplanned Pregnancy: Lessons from the States.” Brookings Institution. 
  • Secura, Gina M., Tessa Madden, Colleen McNicholas, Jennifer Mullersman, Christina M. Buckel, Quihong Zhao, and Jeffrey F. Peipert. 2014. “Provision of No-Cost, Long-Acting Contraception and Teenage Pregnancy.” New England Journal of Medicine 371: 1316-1323.
  • Reingold, Rebecca B. and Lawrence O. Gostin. 2019. “State Abortion Restrictions and the New Supreme Court.” JAMA 322(1): 21-22.

Week 13: Federalism

• November 17: Transgender Health (Slides)
  
  • McNeil, Jay, Sonja J. Ellis, and Fiona R. Eccles. 2017. “Suicide in Trans Populations: A Systematic Review of Prevalence and Correlates.” Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity 4(3): 341-353.
    
  • Safer, Joshua D., Eli Coleman, Jamie Feldman, Robert Garofalo, Wylie Hembree, Asa Radix, and Jae Sevelius. 2016. “Barriers to Health Care for Transgender Individuals.” Current Opinion in Endocrinology, Diabetes and Obesity 23(2): 168-171.
  • Stroumsa, Daphna, Deirdre A. Shires, Caroline R. Richardson, Kim D. Jaffee, and Michael R. Woodford. 2019. “Transphobia Rather Than Education Predicts Provider Knowledge of Transgender Health Care.” Medical Education 53: 398-407.
  • Peer Review 2 Due
• November 19: Marijuana (Slides)
  
  • Mallinson, Daniel J. and A. Lee Hannah. 2020. “Policy and Political Learning: The Development of Medical Marijuana Policies in the States.” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 50(3): 344-369.
  • Katrin Schlag, Anne. 2020. “An Evaluation of Regulatory Regimes of Medical Cannabis: What Lessons Can Be Learned from the UK?” Medical Cannabis and Cannabinoids 3(1): 76-83.
  • Khan, Rabia, Sadiq Naveed, Nadeem Mian, Ania Fida, Muhammad Abdur Raafey, and Kapil Kiran Aedma. 2020. “The Therapeutic Role of Cannabidiol in Mental Health: A Systematic Review.” Journal of Cannabis Research 2: 1-21. 

Week 14: Thanksgiving Break

• November 24 and 26: No Class

Week 15: Circuit Breaker and Presentation Prep

• December 1: Pandemic Response and Preparation (Slides)
  
  • Bergquist Savannah, Thomas Otten, and Nick Sarich. 2020. “COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States.” Health Policy and Technology 9(4): 623-638.
  • Tulenko, Kate and Dominique Vervoort. 2020. “Cracks in the System: The Effects of the Coronavirus Pandemic on Public Health Systems.” American Review of Public Administration 50(6-7): 455-466.
  • Kirlin, John. 2020. “COVID-19 Upends Pandemic Plan.” American Review of Public Administration 50(6-7): 467-479.
  • Wolf-Fordham, Susan. 2020. “Integrating Government Silos: Local Emergency Management and Public Health Department Collaboration for Emergency Planning and Response.” American Review of Public Administration 50(6-7): 560-567.
• December 3: Presentation Preparation
  
  • No class meeting
• December 4
  • Final Rough Draft Due

Week 16: Presentations

• December 8: Team Presentations
• December 10: Final Paper Workshop Day
  • I will be on Zoom for any last minute check-ins
• December 11
  • Third peer review and all make-up work due

Week 17: Finals Week

• Final Policy Analysis Paper due December 17 by midnight