Exercises - PH 425 Community Agenda Setting

In addition to a variety of learning activities, there are 3 instructor-evaluated activities associated with PH 425: (1) complete the individual exercise; (2) participate in a multi-learner conferencing exercise; and (3) complete and submit the assessment quiz. Each of these is explained below.

Learning Activities (Note: these ARE NOT to be submitted!)

A series of individual learning exercises for this module are provided below. Completing these exercises will familiarize you with the knowledge, skills and attitudes that relate to the competency expectation for this module that is described above. Note that learners are not required to submit written response for these learning exercises. Completing these exercises, however, will prepare you for components of this module that are assessed and scored.

1. Review the basic content for PH 425, which is provided in several online resources:
   • Community Tool Box: Analyzing Community Problems, Analyzing Root Causes of Problems, Talking about Risk and Protective Factors Related to Community Issues
   
   
   • National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO): Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships (MAPP) web site (click on the MAPP link to register for access to the MAPP information and resources). Then review the section on Community Health Status Assessment in the MAPP resource materials. Also see the MAPP Field Guide, A Strategic Approach to Community Health Improvement (in PDF format)
   
   
   • Public Health Foundation: Healthy People 2010 Toolkit, Setting Health Priorities and Establishing Objectives
   
   
   • Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality: Preventive Services (including The Guide to Clinical Preventive Services)
   
   
   • Task Force on Community Preventive Services: The Guide to Community Preventive Services
2. Briefly describe "necessary" and "sufficient" in terms of causal evidence.
3. In the MAPP model, how do the various assessment results come together into prioritized strategic issues?
4. Which aspects of analyzing health problems for their root causes are required in the community health improvement provisions of IPLAN (Hint: look in the Administrative Code)?
5. Identify one important health problem (perhaps the one you will use for the Individual Exercise below), and develop outcome and impact objectives and intervention strategies. Use the Clinical Preventive Services and Community Preventive Services guides (Preventive Services including The Guide to Clinical Preventive Services; Task Force on Community Preventive Services: The Guide to Community Preventive Services) to develop evidence-based effective intervention strategies?
6. A mediator is a variable that intervenes or comes between two other variables in a hypothesized causal pathway. Example: with stress, smoking, and low birthweight-- smoking is a mediator, or causal link, between stress and low birthright (stress also has direct effects on low brithweight). Provide your own example of three variables in which one is the mediator.
7. A moderator is a variable that allows one variable to differentially impact another variable. These are also called "effect modifiers" and their effects are referred as interaction effects. Example: with stress, gender, and alcohol use -- the effects of stress on alcohol use are moderated by gender (male/female), i.e. the effect of stress on alcohol use differs depending on gender. Provide your own example of three variables in which one is the moderator.
8. In your opinion, is there currently an appropriate balance between the use of quantitative and qualitative date in community health assessments?

Evaluated Activities (Note: these ARE to be submitted!)

(1) Individual Exercise

Each learner will submit a brief response to the following exercise. Produce your response on a separate document to be uploaded at the "Submit Assignments" link. Please use "PH 425 Individual Exercises" as the title of your submission.

After reviewing the IPLAN site, select a health outcome and analyze that health problem for its determinants and contributing factors. Identify at least two major determinants for that problem. For each determinant, identify at least two direct contributing factors, and for each direct contributing factor, identify at least two indirect contributing factors. (There is a PowerPoint presentation describing IPLAN that may be useful for this exercise.)

(2) Conferencing Exercise

Add your contributions to this multi-learner conferencing exercise after reviewing any available submissions by other learners. Produce your response on a separate document to be uploaded at the "Submit Assignments" link. Please use "PH 425 Conferencing Exercises" as the title of your submission.

There are 2 propositions to be considered:

• Proposition A: Qualitative methods are less rigorous than quantitative methods and should only be used to support findings derived from good qualitative data.
• Proposition B: Qualitative methods are in and of themselves just as scientifically valid as quantitative methods (no less rigorous). In many cases, they can "stand alone" as part of the chain of evidence for assessing particular health issues.

How would you respond to these differing propositions? Should findings based on qualitative (as opposed to quantitative) methods be treated differently when assessing community health and setting objectives for community action?

(3) Assessment Quiz

Follow the LearningSpace link to the Assessment Quiz. You may be asked for your login ID and password to access the quiz through your Preparedness Center Personal Page. Complete the quiz and submit your responses. You make take the quiz several times.

Course Evaluation: All learners are asked to electronically complete a Course Evaluation Questionnaire; this is available to you as an electronic form and will be transmitted to a data base without your identity being known, and your instructor will have no way to link your identity to your comments. Before participating in these course evaluation activities, students should review the specific learning objectives established for this course (and others you may have taken as part of this series); these are available in the Syllabus. Evaluation of the course should focus on the extent to which these objectives were achieved.

PH 425 Exercises last revised June 06, 2006 (csong)