Post a description of the health policy you selected and a brief background for the problem or issue being addressed. Explain whether you believe there is an evidence base to support the proposed policy and explain why. Be specific and provide examples.

Post a description of the health policy you selected and a brief background for the problem or issue being addressed.

The identified health policy is: Improving Access to Health Care in Rural and Underserved Areas Act (S.201). The bill was sponsored by Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV). The bill has been read twice and is currently before the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. The bill seeks to direct the Health Resources and Services Administration to award 100 grants to federally qualified health care facilities located in rural areas with the intention to enabling their medical personnel to access accredited continuing medical education (Congress.gov, 2021). Rural providers face a range of issues that act as barriers to health care access.  Evidence Base in Design Discussion Paper A key issue is resource limitations, particularly limited numbers of medical personnel who have limited professional knowledge, skills and competence, and limited experience. This hinders them from providing comprehensive medical services that are unable to meet all the health care needs of rural populations. This results in patients in rural populations being forced to seek health care services from more experienced and knowledgeable providers in urban areas. Through providing medical personnel in rural areas with grants for accredited continuing medical education, they would be able to improve their professional knowledge, skills and competence, thus allowing them to provide more comprehensive care the needs of patients in rural areas (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2020).

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Explain whether you believe there is an evidence base to support the proposed policy and explain why.

There is an evidence base to support the proposed policy. Low quality of care in rural areas means that those in need of care frequently have to travel to urban areas for care. This has been linked to low knowledge, skills and competence levels of medical personnel in rural areas when compared to urban areas. Besides that, there is significant urban bias with medical personnel in urban areas being offered more opportunities to improve their professional knowledge, experience and skills. Offering medical personnel in rural areas more education opportunities would help to reverse the situation (Wei et al., 2019).

References

Congress.gov (2021). S.201 – Improving Access to Health Care in Rural and Underserved Areas Act. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/201?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22health+care%22%2C%22health%22%2C%22care%22%5D%7D&s=1&r=17

Stanhope, M., & Lancaster, J. (2020). Public Health Nursing: Population-Centered Health Care in the Community. Elsevier, Inc.

Wei, M. H., Chen, X. Z., Zhan, X. X., Zhang, Z. X., Yu, S. J., & Yan, W. R. (2019). The effect of a web-based training for improving primary health care providers’ knowledge about diabetes mellitus management in rural China: A pre-post intervention study. PLoS ONE, 14(9), e0222930. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0222930

Discussion 1: Evidence Base in Design

When politics and medical science intersect, there can be much debate. Sometimes anecdotes or hearsay are misused as evidence to support a particular point. Despite these and other challenges, however, evidence-based approaches are increasingly used to inform health policy decision-making regarding causes of disease, intervention strategies, and issues impacting society. One example is the introduction of childhood vaccinations and the use of evidence-based arguments surrounding their safety.

In this Discussion, you will identify a recently proposed health policy and share your analysis of the evidence in support of this policy.

To Prepare:

Review the Congress website provided in the Resources and identify one recent (within the past 5 years) proposed health policy.

Review the health policy you identified and reflect on the background and development of this health policy.

Post a description of the health policy you selected and a brief background for the problem or issue being addressed. Explain whether you believe there is an evidence base to support the proposed policy and explain why. Be specific and provide examples.  Evidence Base in Design Discussion Paper