case study
Poverty, while not a disease process, is well known to have far-reaching effects on the health of children and adolescents and can carry over into adulthood. Using all of the resources at your disposal, make a case for how Adverse Childhood Experiences are connected to poverty and how both are connected to lifelong health and wellness. The essay is persuasive in nature, and you can pretend that you are writing to your state senator about why this is an important topic. Use the following questions to help you form your argument: • How does being poor now affect children and their families later? What kinds of protective factors will the kiddos featured in “Poor Kids” need to overcome their childhood experiences? • What are some of the challenges children in poverty face that children who have better access to resources might not face? • Why is poverty often called a “vicious cycle?”

Case Study: Poverty Effects

Case Study: Poverty Effects

What makes poverty cyclic? • Why is school an important place for children living in poverty? • Why does place matter? How does where one lives affect their ability to be at their best health? • Do you believe that a family of 4 could make a living earning minimum wage? Why or why not? • How do we, as community and public health professionals, help families like those featured in “Poor Kids” from falling through the cracks? If you are majoring in another area besides community health, how could your area of study/major help? • How does the stigma of seeking out and using social service programs (like SNAP benefits or cash assistance programs) hurt Kylie, Jasmine, and Brittany and their families? What could we do to reduce that stigma? Writing Guidelines • 3-5 pages (about 1200 words) • Answer any or all or other questions as outlined above. Those are merely suggestions. • The goal of this paper is to write persuasively about what you’ve learned about the connections between poverty and public health to convince someone to make changes to public health infrastructure. • It helps to make an outline first, outlining the key points of your argument. Then fill in with supporting facts and citations! • “A” quality papers will use citations in a particular citation style throughout to support their arguments. A paper that uses minimal to no citations will most likely be a “C” quality paper. • Upload to Moodle as a PDF or Word document only, saved as Lastname_Poverty.filename • Failure to upload by the due date and time will result in the risk of my not accepting the paper. Possible Resources: Frontline “Poor Kids” documentary ACEs article from NPR Adverse Childhood Experiences TEDx talk from Dr. Nadine Burke Harris NPR Greenland articles Place Matters video Poverty lecture Poverty & homelessness lecture/materials from Moodle Other outside resources Deadline: after 2 hrYou must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

 

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation

Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality

Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes

I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy

For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.