Description

Scenario:
You are an analyst for your state’s department of health. Legislators have identified a problem: not enough organs are being donated from living donors (e.g. kidney, liver, bone marrow) to meet demand from recipients in need at state hospitals. They are considering what policy intervention might address this problem. So far they have only come up with one alternative: a TV ad campaign designed to increase the rate of living donations in the state. However, they hope to come up with more alternatives as debate continues.

You have been tasked with analyzing whether this policy intervention is a good idea, and to prepare to analyze it comparatively against other possible interventions the legislators may propose.

In order to begin this analysis:

1.      1)  Come up with and succinctly describe FOUR criteria that you will use to evaluate the proposed policy intervention, as well as any additional interventions legislators propose. (Note: you don’t have to come up with or analyze any other interventions; however, your criteria should be chosen so that they could be used in a CAM matrix analysis comparing multiple policy intervention alternatives. They should not be criteria that are only applicable to this specific intervention.)

In choosing and describing these criteria, try to choose criteria that are relevant and that reasonably represent the most important areas of evaluation. Also, draw on the review materials from April 8 and feedback on PS3.

2.      2)  Do the first step of outcome analysis for the TV ad campaign intervention across each criterion you chose. Specifically:

1.      Determine what type/direction of impact you expect the intervention to have on the outcome each criterion is measuring (e.g. increase? Reduce? Something else?).

2.      describe the causal mechanism that links the intervention to the impact you expect it to have on the outcome the criterion is measuring. Draw on the causal mechanism review mechanisms discussed on April 13.

You do not need to go further and complete a full outcome analysis for this assignment.

Example: working in the arena of public water policy, considering a policy intervention in the form of “increase chlorine levels in city water” and a criterion in the form of

“minimize bacterial count per liter of water”, my answers would look something like this:
a) Reduce [bacterial count]
b) Chlorine is a chemical that kills bacteria. Therefore, increasing chlorine levels in city

water is expected to kill more bacteria. Killing more bacteria is expected to result in a lower bacterial count per liter of water.