Class Papers Spring 2012

I quit my job three weeks ago tomorrow and although I'm still panting a little bit from unproductive financial stress (largely unnecessary, as I've adopted laughably stringent austerity measures), I am having a grand old time taking four courses and working on my fellowship.

For some reason, all of my courses wanted me to name my final paper/project topics early in the semester.  This is actually great for me, as I'm otherwise inclined to agonize for, oh, about half the term just to land on a topic. So here's what I'll be working on this semester:

PM 702 - Intro to Health Policy and Management: this is a huge class, so the final project is fairly short - a 5-pager built up over the course of the semester by tracking a chosen health policy topic in the news and watching it evolve. I chose to watch the conversation about the Essential Health Benefits requirement of the ACA.

MC 785 - Sexual and Reproductive Health Advocacy: final project is an Op-Ed. I considered writing about sex ed, but decided to stick closer to home and write about VBAC bans. Pretty excited about this - hoping to draw in some stuff from my awesome PH law class last semester.

MC 763 - Maternal and Child Health Policy Making: two main projects - a profile of a policymaker and an analysis of a specific policy. My plan is to write a profile of Rhode Island state Senator Rhoda E. Perry, who is proud to claim the distinction of being "the most liberal legislator in the Senate for many a year" and who sponsored the recently-passed RI law prohibiting the shackling of incarcerated women during labor, delivery, and the postpartum period. I'll write my policy analysis on that law. (Various advocates and lawmakers here in Massachusetts are trying to pass a similar bill - if I am happy with what I can do for these course projects, I will probably try to get in touch with those advocacy groups and see if any of it is useful to them.)

SB 820 - Assessment and Planning for Health Promotion: I'm writing about stroke in Charlestown ... this class basically assigned us our topics. Fine by me - I know next to nothing about either stroke or Charlestown, and I'm always up for getting to know a new Boston neighborhood!

From here.

PS. I'm looking forward to writing about my fellowship, but we have not launched yet, so I can't.

PPS. Now I am going to pretend that my fellowship involves space travel.