PH W-7

Public Health Initiatives 

There are limited resources in public health and public health administrators are often faced with tough choices as to how to use those limited resources wisely.

Should limited resources be expended on education and prevention, or on interventions?   As a public health administrator, you may be called upon to decide whether to implement a proposed prevention campaign, and to make that decision, you will need to know whether that type of campaign is likely to be effective.

For this week, you have two choices in how you discuss this topic:

1. Identify a prevention campaign such as a TV advertisement, print ad, school program, etc. that is addressing a public health issue. Post a copy of the ad, a link to the ad, or a link to the program in your response.  Explain what you feel you would need to know before you would approve the implementation of this type of prevention campaign and why.Other students should respond to that post by checking the literature and posting any empirical evidence that might help to make the determination as to whether the prevention campaign is likely to be effective.
2. Alternatively, a student can post empirical evidence in the form of a study that a given type of prevention campaign is effective or ineffective. Other students should respond to that post by providing an example of that type of prevention campaign (in other words, this is the exact opposite of #1) and what they feel they would need to know as public health administrators in order to make an implementation decision.