· Identify a policy that is not usually intended to be a health policy but that you think may have important health implications.
A gas tax is a policy that is not usually intended to be a health policy but may have important health implications. Gas taxes discourage people from driving their own personal vehicles and encourage alternative forms of transportation including walking, biking, and use of public transportation. A decrease in use of fossil fuels associated with a gas tax may also have implications for persons with chronic pulmonary diseases such as asthma.
· Describe why an evaluation of that policy is informative (e.g., determining effects of the policy, or primarily a test of hypothesized mediators).
Evaluating the effects of new or altered gas tax policies allows us to evaluate such policies as a specific variable which may contribute significantly to health at the population level.
· Specify the outcomes and populations you think most affected or least affected by the policy.
Health outcomes most affected by the policy may include for example rates of obesity, mortality from car accidents, and emergency room visits for exacerbations of chronic pulmonary conditions. Populations most affected would be those for which the gas tax is an economic burden and who have access to alternative modes of transportation. I would think populations with high economic resources (immune to effects of tax) or those with poor alternative modes of transportation (no public transportation, infrastructure for biking, reasonable routes for walking) would be least affected by the policy.
· Propose a study design to evaluate the policy.
The gas tax in California has periodically increased over time. Evaluating changes in these health outcomes from one gas tax period to the next could allow us to evaluate the health impact of the policy if sufficient data sets were available.
· Describe biggest challenge to implementing and drawing inferences about the impact of the policy on health.
The biggest challenge in implementing and drawing inferences about the impact of the policy on health is that there will be confounding changes and concurrent policies which will be difficult to completely control for.