Diversity and Health Care Blog

#GEA 1: Assignment 2 
Diversity and Health Care
Professional Blog
Assignment steps:

Step 1: Prewriting (due Sunday, February 24, submitted to the Prewriting and Peer Review (2) assignments) 
Step 2: Peer reviews (due Wednesday, February 27; submitted as replies to your group member’s posted work) 
Step 3: Diversity and Health Care Blog submission (due Sunday, March 3) 
NOTE: All assignments close at 11:59 PM. The phrase “due by 11:59 pm” means assignments must be submitted before 11:59 pm. Assignments not submitted before the assignments close at 11:59 pm will not be accepted.

For each step of the assignment, see the assignment details in Canvas for full instructions. A brief overview is provided here:  

Step 1: Prewriting is a research and organization based assignment that will help you begin putting your blog together. During Step 2: Peer-review, you will submit your Prewriting assignment to the Peer-review forum, where you will review other students’ completed Prewriting assignments, and also have your completed Prewriting assignment reviewed by other students. Through careful peer review, you will learn how to more critically assess your own work, which, with feedback from your peers, will help you develop a stronger and more well-developed professional blog. Step 3: Diversity and Health Care blog submission is when you will submit your polished, completed professional blog to a public forum. 

Diversity and Health Care Professional Blog (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. Overview: 
For this professional blog, you will use your previous work comparing health care systems as a foundation for building your Diversity and Health Care blog. Students will:

Narrow their topic to a manageable area of interest
Evaluate how diversity affects medical interactions between the diverse group listed below and the health care system and professionals they are subject to
Include a comparative element, which could be a cross-cultural comparison, gender comparison, health system comparison, etc.
Assess deficiencies within the system as related to the diverse group, and discuss steps that could/should/must be taken to improve quality of care (which may include treatment, treatment development, access to care, attitudes toward the group, etc.)

Because issues of diversity are expansive, a diverse group has been chosen for all students to write about. However, students are individually responsible for determining what aspect of health care they wish to consider in relation to the diverse group.
The diverse group that all students will write about is: Women
Focus:
With women as your focus, you may choose to explore a wide range of health care related topics. Some broad examples of topics within the health care system include, but are in no way limited to:

Treatments
Development of treatments
Health care provider attitudes toward women
Access to health care
A particular health issue, such as heart disease, back injury, migraine, endometriosis, mental health, etc.
Etc. –> there are hundreds of ways you can focus your research

Comparative Element:
As part of this assignment, you must include a comparative element. Some examples of comparison include, but are not limited to:

Comparisons between groups of women within a single country’s health system (for example, race, religion, cultural heritage, language, body size, etc.)
Gender comparisons (for example, heart disease treatment in women, and how that treatment compares to and differs from heart disease treatment in men)
Comparison of your focus (for example, access to health care) between the two healthcare systems you researched for your first blog
Etc. –> there are many comparative elements you can consider

How to focus your Diversity and Health Care blog: 

First, determine which health care system you wish to situate your research in
Next, think about your focus.

It may help to think about what aspects of that health care system you found interesting, perplexing, infuriating, etc. Is there a particular aspect would you like to find out more about?
Or, you may have had, or know someone who has had, an unsettling, difficult, problematic, etc. health/health care experience, and you may wish to examine whether it was an isolated instance or if it is a widespread issue.
Or, you may have recently seen a headline about a health issue that you would like to know more about.
Or, you can browse headlines in the health sections of some of the reliable news sources listed in the Approved Sources list from the last assignment to help you find a focus for your Diversity blog.

Do some preliminary research about women within whatever topic/focus you choose (you may wish to look into a couple to see what focus most interests you).
Once you have decided on a focus, begin your in-depth research.
Your in-depth research will help you determine what kind of comparison will be the most suitable for your work.
Your in-depth research will also likely reveal intersections between some of the potential foci and comparisons listed above. This is to be expected – aspects of health care do not exist in a vacuum. While it is important to acknowledge these intersections, it is also important to stay focused and not get derailed.

Diversity and Health Care Blog Minimum Requirements: 

Minimum 500 words; Maximum 1000 words 
A title (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. that is short, sweet, and to the point that captures the topic and essence of the paper, but is not overly explanatory
A clear, concise, coherent thesis statement (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. that makes a case/presents an argument.
Clear, well organized, and easy to follow structural organization. Your blog must include a clear, useful, and easily discernible introduction (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. and conclusion (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (see the linked resources for information on how to write introductions (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. and conclusions (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.). Furthermore, the organization of your blog must serve to support your main argument (thesis statement) (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. throughout your work. For example, the introduction should highlight aspects of your research that support whatever your main argument is, and every topic sentence of every body-paragraph must begin with a strong, clear, concise topic sentence that both supports your thesis statement and acts as a thesis statement for its paragraph. 
You must use a minimum of 5 sources for full credit in this section of the rubric. Your sources will be listed at the bottom of your blog, under the heading “References.” You must also provide in-text citations, which should be hyperlinked when possible – remember that if you needed a username and password to access a source (such as through the library), your hyperlink may not work, or will be inaccessible to some. Instead, link to a publicly available copy or abstract of your source. 
You may wish to/be able to draw from the same list of acceptable sources that was provided for you in your last assignment. For this assignment, 3 of your 5 required sources must be from published, peer reviewed academic journals. 

You may also use additional sources of your own finding beyond the 3 required journal article sources required; yes, this means that the other two required sources can be sources that are not included in the Approved Sources list from the last assignment. However, it is essential that the sources you use are similar in credibility and authority to the sources indicated in the Approved Sources list. Sources that are not similar in credibility and authority will not be counted toward your required number of sources. 

You must use APA formatting (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. for your references, and you must cite your sources appropriately. For example, cite news articles as news articles (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site., academic journal articles as academic journal articles (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site., and government documents as government documents (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site., etc. You can find a sample APA reference page here (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site..

Tips for writing an above average blog (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.: 

Use appropriate tone and language (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. Your tone and language for this blog should be professional, but personable. You have the freedom to use your own voice, and to take a more casual approach than you would if you were using a strict academic style. You also want to be relatable to a broad audience. However, your audience must be able to take you seriously, and should interpret you as a credible writer/speaker. So, your challenge is to balance clear, professional language and tone with a personable approach. 
Use hyperlinks throughout your blog post. Hyperlinks can be embedded utilizing the toolbar at the top of your text entry area in the Canvas discussion board where you will submit your work.
Integrate appropriate visuals, such as charts and graphs, which must be referred to in the text and cited appropriately. Take a look at some of the exemplar blogs provided to you to see how hyperlinks and visuals can be successfully integrated, and consider using Gapminder (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. tools to help you present your data effectively. You can also insert pictures, videos, and graphs into your blog post using the toolbar at the top of the text entry area in the Canvas discussion board where you will submit your work.