Identify a policy that is not usually intended to be a health policy but that you think may have important health implications.
Trump's travel ban
· Describe why an evaluation of that policy is informative (e.g., determining effects of the policy, or primarily a test of hypothesized mediators).
Determining the health effects of this policy is informative because among the estimated 926,000 physicians working in the US, 7,000 hail from the affected countries. The five American cities with the highest density of physician trained in travel ban countries are: Detroit, MI; Toledo, Dayton, and Cleveland, Ohio; Los Angeles, CA.
· Specify the outcomes and populations you think most affected or least affected by the policy.
Outcome can be survival in these five cities using census data.
· Propose a study design to evaluate the policy.
The travel ban can be treated like a natural experiment.
· Describe biggest challenge to implementing and drawing inferences about the impact of the policy on health.
Several confounders could be at play including secular trends that would need to be adjusted for.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/07/health/travel-ban-doctors-by-the-numbers-trnd/index.html