Identify a policy that is not usually intended to be a health policy but that you think may have important health implications.
One non-health policy which may have an important health policy is the three strikes rule for non-violent offenders.
Describe why an evaluation of that policy is informative (e.g., determining effects of the policy, or primarily a test of hypothesized mediators).
I think it would be important to evaluate that policy because the purpose of the law is to keep society safe, however, there are a lot of issues related to this, specifically, the incarceration of people for life sentences who would likely not be a danger to society. Determining the effects of the policy would be helpful to know if it has other issues beyond incarceration.
Specify the outcomes and populations you think most affected or least affected by the policy.
I think the population most impacted by the policy would be (1) the people who are non-violent offenders and (2) the children of these people. I suppose the least affected is people who live in areas without the three strikes law.
Propose a study design to evaluate the policy.
If we are looking at health outcomes, you could look at childhood obesity, childhood diabetes, childhood mortality, etc from children of non-violent offenders who are incarcerated for life under the three strikes law vs children of non-violent offenders who are on parole. I suspect that having a parent around would make the child’s health outcomes better.
Describe biggest challenge to implementing and drawing inferences about the impact of the policy on health.
The biggest challenge would be the identification of the study base correctly. Another issue is that they is a lot of variability in parenting so in order for the study to be totally accurate you would need to match on some important variables. Another way to do this could be a pre-post from before to after the rule was implemented in a neighborhood. It would be much more feasible but the time component would counfound the results.