Strategies for Success in
Group Projects - Health Care
August 2012
Group Projects
Goals
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This assignment has two goals.
First, a group project enables you to demonstrate your mastery of key concepts
in this course. The project strengthens your understanding of health care.
Secondly, all of you during your careers will be asked to develop a plan, policy, or
program to meet an agency or public need or to address a public problem.
Successful design of an effective plan or policy is an essential skill in public
administration. This plan may concern health care but the skill set you acquire
and develop will travel with you as you confront the exact same challenge of
developing and presenting plans to address different problems throughout your
career.
Students graduating from the Public Administration Program must have the ability
to design evidence-based solutions to effectively address administrative
challenges in their agency and real world problems within their community. The
purpose of this project is to help ensure that students acquire and
strengthen the skill to identify a community challenge or public need,
confirm the causes of this problem or service gap, and then design and
present a plan to successfully solve or achieve measurable progress on the
problem or meet a documented need. The plan would need to be able to
secure the support of policymakers.
Group Projects
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Each group will research, design, and present a proposed public policy or
program to address a major challenge within the U.S. health care system.
The public policy can be designed and implemented at the local, state or federal
levels. It can be aimed at addressing or responding to any of the policy challenges
being studied in this course.
The proposal should effectively address the issues of access, cost, and quality.
Students should specify the nature of the public problem which is being addressed,
the empirical research and any theories which guided the development of the policy,
any value choices which influenced policy selection, the selected tool or tools of
public policy, the process of policy formulation and legitimation, the details of
policy implementation (i.e. passage of law, agency or agencies responsible for
administration or enforcement, resources required, etc.), and the objectives and
outcomes it is intended to achieve. Groups should also explain their means of policy
evaluation and its expected findings (you don’t actually implement it but we can
identify expected outcomes).
Groups will generate a written public policy proposal and make a class
presentation on it.
Group Projects
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Groups will generate a written public policy proposal and make a class
presentation on it. Both the written proposal and presentation should be
turned in to the instructor (e.g. hand me your plan and your PPT). The
group will be asked questions about their proposal by the instructors and
their colleagues. Each group should present as if they were appearing
before a group of elected officials or agency administrators and
community stakeholders attempting to win their support for your
proposed plan.
Groups should consist of five students. The instructor will allocate class
time for students to conduct work on these projects
Group Projects
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This is a new plan which you design. Can you draw upon best practices and
lessons learned in the research you conduct to support your plan? Yes! Should you
simply present what City A is doing now to address the issue of indigent care? No!
That’s reporting on someone else’s plan – this assignment is researching,
developing, and presenting your own plan. In our case study presentations in other
classes, presenting a plan already in operation in a jurisdiction is the assignment – it
is not the assignment here. This needs to be an original work product which you
create. Presenting a plan is already in the works or in operation in a jurisdiction is
sure to get a hit on “Turn It In” (we have a word for presenting someone else’s plan
as your own – the word is plagiarism – trust me on this, I have had it happen before
with predictable & unpleasant results).
Required elements are found in your course syllabus.
Cut & paste each of these required elements into your draft plan now and have
them serve as subheads in your draft plan – this will provide good structure to your
plan and ensure that you don’t leave out a required element of the plan.
Group Projects
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For each required element, you research & write as much as you need to
effectively answer this specific question or sufficiently explain this element of
your plan. Different elements may be answered with different amounts of content
(some issues may require a page or two – others maybe a paragraph). This is an
executive summary not a point by point 500 page plan – you don’t win points
by the weight of the final product – it’s the quality!
How long should the plan be? As long as it needs to be to effectively cover the
required elements.
Think of it this way – if each of the 5 of you were writing research papers, that’s
8 pages per student, that’s a total of 40 pages (excluding cover page &
references). 10 pages would be too brief to cover all required elements – 100
pages would probably be longer than you need to have.
There are 20 required elements in the plan – some will require more content or
explanation than others while others will require less – you have a group of 5
team members so it can be thought of as each member of the group being
responsible for 4 elements each – that’s not a ton of work!
How much content for each element? Enough to effectively explain what you
are doing and why you are doing it to the point where policymakers, agency
leaders, and key stakeholders would be convinced that this is the way to go!
Group Projects
Potential Topics
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The United States health care system faces many challenges which could be
addressed by your proposed policy/program. (please see pp. 548-558 in your
textbook for a discussion of these priority issues).
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In previous classes, students have tackled public policy challenges such as:
1) Creating and sustaining a community-based health care system for the indigent
(an ER alternative) 2) Developing a program to meet the health care needs of the
uninsured.
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I am also providing you with copies of two “A” projects from my last Health
Care class – review them – they will provide valuable guidance to you. However,
use it as a guide – the goal is not to recreate or repeat a past project but to develop
yours utilizing these as examples of the high quality I want to see in your project.
Sources of Research
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I am enclosing a PPT on Research Success and conducting an in class seminar on
success in research. Please refer to your syllabus and the research PPT for specific
guidance on locating research for this project. Students who have taken my previous
classes should be pretty comfortable and confident now with how to locate the
research needed for a successful group project.
Group Projects
Required Elements
*These would almost all be required for any new policy, program, or plan which is being
developed and implemented to meet a public need or attack a public problem.
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Description of the Background/History of the Issue in Health Care
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Significance of this issue in American health care
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Research on this problem & proposed policy/program - literature review/best practices &
theoretical understanding of the problem and proposed solution (how will this proposal avoid
theory failure?) – what does the research identify as the causes of this problem and what does the
research tell us would help address those causes to solve or mitigate this problem? does the
research support your proposed solution?
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Scope of Plan/Population Affected - community, state, national?
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Targeted Health Problems within Population Served
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Policy Values – what values are reflected in this public policy choice?
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Policy Goals – objectives, outputs, & outcomes
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Policy Formulation - which participants in the policymaking process influenced the development
of this public policy and explain their roles? (who did we need to develop this proposal – “we drew
upon research from ______ and we would have these researchers testify before Congress in
support of the bill”) & Policy Legitimation - which participants in the policymaking process
influenced the selection of this public policy and explain their roles? (who is required to take action
to authorize and implement this plan – do we need to pass a federal or state law? do we need $
from the county?)
Group Projects
Required Elements
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Type of Agency/Agencies Involved - public/private/non-profit?
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Tools of public policy which might be utilized to address your selected challenge in health care
could include legislation, provide a service or program, taxes, budgetary/fiscal policy (spending),
regulation (economic/social), subsidies and grants, vouchers, re-engineering/reorganization,
privatization/contracting out, or social marketing – or a combination of several of these policy tools
employed together to address the problem. To get the job done (implement the policy), which
tools will we use? Spend $, regulate, provide grants, impose a tax, public awareness
campaign, partnerships with private & nonprofit sectors, etc.
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Key Definitions - how are major issues defined within the law/regulation or program/service?
When we refer to “indigent” we mean what? (i.e. families below the federal poverty line)
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Services - If services are being provided through your policy/program, what services are provided
and who are your service providers?
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System Workforce/Personnel - description of the personnel involved in the implementation of
this policy (i.e. physicians and hospitals, community board of clinic users for clinic oversight, etc.)
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Financing - description of the budget – sources of revenue and major expenditures associated
with this law/program/service – how are we paying for this policy/program? (patients with
public insurance, patients with private insurance, grants, charitable contributions/endowments,
taxes/fees, a mix of revenue raising tools, etc.)
Group Projects
Required Elements
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Role of government - what will government be doing – payer, provider, regulator, research, get
out of the way, etc.?
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Role of technology – what technology do we need? (IT systems, EHRs, drugs, therapies,
surgeries, treatment, etc.) – will be a high tech system, a relatively low tech service, etc.?
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Timeline - a schedule/calendar for implementation (a single year plan, a multi-year plan, etc.)
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Evaluation of the policy/program – how do we measure to see if this is working and has
worked? Measure system performance (access, cost, quality) - which type of policy analysis or
program evaluation was employed to measure objectives, outputs, and outcomes? what type of
data/information would be collected and how would it be analyzed? anticipated and unanticipated
findings? successful or unsuccessful? (if unsuccessful, is it a case of theory failure or program
failure?) recommendations for the future of this public policy? (repeal/termination,
reform/modify, maintain/expand/restrict, postpone/delay further implementation)
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Conclusion – what’s the bottom line? Summarize key elements of plan, summary of expected
findings, what best practices/lessons learned might be obtained, what recommendations for the
future of this public policy might be made, are there any avenues for future research, & are there
any broader implications for public policy (can this public policy proposal serve to inform or
improve policies within the same field/discipline or outside of it?)
Group Projects
Please include:
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a title page
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a table of contents
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an executive summary (one page overview summarizing all major
elements of this public policy proposal)
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citations and a reference page
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accompanying supporting documents (appendices – Appendix A –
graph depicting levels of insured over time in our community)
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citations and the reference page should conform to APA standards
**Make sure you turn in your final version only once to Turn It In – I send
the information needed to do this to all students – you can do it the last
day of class when you present – just make sure you do it and submit it
only once!
Group Projects
Format
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It is recommended that students structure their proposal by utilizing the elements of the
“Required Project Elements” as subheads throughout their proposal.
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APA will only apply to citations and the reference page. Please access the following two
websites which explain the APA format and style for paper composition. Here is a link to the
Purdue University Owl Website which provides APA guidelines and answers to frequently asked
questions:
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http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
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Here is a link to the APA Frequently Asked Questions website page:
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http://www.apastyle.org/faqs.html
Indices of Quality
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Professionalism of the written proposal and class presentation
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Degree of critical thinking
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Quality of research
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Application of major course concepts
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Use of innovative strategies and tactics
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Sound decision-making
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Level of comprehensiveness
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Cohesion as a project team
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Understanding of the strengths and limitations inherent to this policy choice
Group Projects
Closing Comments
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Continue to use in class time – 8 of our 10 classes provide you with in
class time.
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Happy to review draft plans & provide you with feedback &
suggestions – those of you who have produced plans, policies, & budgets
for me before have a good idea of what success looks like.
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Questions?
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Good luck!