1)Primary Response: Within the Discussion Board area, write 300–500 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.

For this Discussion Board, please complete the following:

Think about how policy affects every aspect of what an employee does at work.

Policy is often difficult to change. The reason is that policy refers to the laws that healthcare professionals live by in the healthcare world. Consider the role that policy plays in the day-to-day activities of a healthcare employee. In addition, consider that they often rely on data collected to ensure that the correction that they make to policy follows the evidence. Explore the following articles for a deep perspective on the topics of policy and politics and how they are interwoven:

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For this assignment, respond to the following:

· Discuss why this process must be difficult to be equitable in the form of representative government in the United States.

· Explain the role of research and how it affects the policy analysis process.

· Provide a specific example of how research helped develop or change a health-related policy.

2) For this Discussion Board, please complete the following:

The healthcare world and the world overall is now a very different place since the COVID-19 global pandemic uprooted people's daily lives. Healthcare policy had to change on a dime in many places. For example, hospitals fearing the worst limited the visitation of family members to those loved ones struck with illness (both COVID and non-COVID). New parents had to take turns seeing their newborns. Telehealth has taken on a new leading role in many healthcare organizations because face-to-face visits were no longer acceptable due to nationwide lockdowns. Many organizations did this to mitigate risk and follow strategic national policy. Your organization has decided to take a stand to implement the same strategy. Its policy is to not allow any visitors during a lockdown.

In this class debate, you are going to be placed on a side of the new visitation policy. Your task is to argue for or against the new policy based on your last name. Those with last names beginning in A–M will argue against, and those with last names beginning in N–Z will argue for. You are tasked with presenting your case to the class on why or why not the policy should stand. Cover the following:

Consider how this has changed the way that you view healthcare access and equality.

Consider the risk to the organization.

Consider the impact of the decision.

Should there be exceptions to the policy? Why or why not?

Use data and evidence from literature to support your argument.

Remember that in healthcare administration, you are often tasked with supporting unpopular policy; it is not your job to change this policy; rather, your job is to defend the side that you are on respectfully.

3) Primary Response: Within the Discussion Board area, write 300–500 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.

For this Discussion Board, please complete the following:

As a new healthcare leader you have been tasked with developing policy for local lawmakers, politicians, and business owners with regard to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines for COVID-19. For this discussion, you will Explore the Covid Data Tracker and the Covid-19 Policy Tracker for a better understanding of what your local policymakers are doing relative to national infection/virus rates and policy recommendations.

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Focus your discussion on the following:

Based on the data related to infection rate trends (past/current) in your area, and the current policy recommendations at the state/local level, discuss what you believe should be the top 2 healthcare policy concerns for lawmakers and healthcare leaders in your local area relative to the COVID-19 pandemic.

If state/local recommendations/policies differ from the CDC policy recommendations related to the Covid-19 Pandemic guidelines (e.g. mask guidelines, quarantine, vaccination requirements in the workplace, etc.) describe what steps you would take and what data you would use to convince local lawmakers to change the polices in the community.

Discussion Board Rubric