Note: Sorry this is late. I thought I had posted before class, but didn't.
1. Identify a policy that is not usually intended to be a health policy but that you think may have important health implications.
The recent uptick in immigration enforcement raids (which are said to be enforcing current policies and regulations) will likely have an impact on health in members of the undocumented immigrant population and their children who may be less likely to seek health services, more likely to be refused services, or more likely to receive low-quality/high-cost services from private providers who don’t report to the state.
•Describe why an evaluation of that policy is informative (primarily about the policy, or primarily a test of hypothesized mediators?)
Evaluating the impact of the policy on health is important because it might influence policy makers to change the policy.
•Specify the outcomes and populations you think most affected or least affected by the policy.
See above
•Propose a study design to evaluate the policy
If could assure anonymity for participants, I would compare undocumented immigrants in states with increased ICE raids with those in states without increased raids and also similar immigrant populations in the same two states. I could then use difference-in-difference specified as:
Yi = α + β1 Documentation + β2 State + β3 Documentation * State + εi
–Describe biggest challenge to implementing and drawing inferences about the impact of the policy on health
I’m quite sure it would not be possible to do this study, since it would put the effected population at risk to identify them, follow-up and collect data. There would also be limitations as to the amount of data on health available before the policy was implemented. Further, if the populations between states or between documented and undocumented were not similar, the groups wouldn’t be exchangeable.