– Key Notes
o Please read the entire assignment below before submitting anything
o Formative Assessment: topic submission due November 10, 2024 instructions)
o Summative Assessment: Final Paper due December 8, 2024
o 2000 words (+/- 10% is acceptable) (see APA and Submission Guidelines above; note the
exception that the paper should be submitted without a cover page and should be single
spaced)
(see notes below for
Assignment:
In our program, we are fortunate to have students and instructors from various disciplines – some are direct healthcare practitioners, some are corporate healthcare leaders, and some are in other human services
functions such as social services and public education. Still others come from many other backgrounds.
This diversity is one of the things that makes the VUL DHA program so dynamic. The most important part
of our diversity is that in one way or another, each of you comes from a background of making the world a better place for people.
6Virginia University of Lynchburg
DHA 803: Leadership and Professional Issues
Dr. Wodicka – Fall 2024
One of the things we discuss during this term is the importance of recognizing, as a leader, how you substantively contribute to a larger mission through your actions – and how a system of actions makes positive impacts on the world. Regardless of your positional title (we have CEOs and front leaders alike in our program), as leaders, each of you are obligated to make your organization, community, and the world a better place through your actions. The purpose of the final exercise is to think about your team and your role in the world and how you can make significant progress on an issue about which you care greatly.
The United Nations describes its Sustainable Development Goals (or SDGs) in the following way: “an urgent call for action by all countries – developed and developing – in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.”
The SDGs provide a list of global goals that can apply to many of the fields in which each of you work. More importantly, we should think about how actions in our own organizations substantively contribute to the larger goals described in the SDGs – each of us have to contribute in our own, even sometimes small, way to make them successful. For example, none of us can solve global poverty individually, but working to solve poverty in our own community helps towards that global goal. For this project, you should choose one of the Sustainable Development Goals and develop a radical plan to make progress on this issue from where you sit in your specific organization, whatever that organization may be. You should research this goal on the UN SDG website (https://sdgs.un.org/goals) and choose one issue in one of the goals to improve.
You should consider, as a component of your thought process, the Systems Practice Workbook from Week 1 (available on Moodle).
Please note that you are invited, and expected, to dream and think big, but you must have a clear and focused target audience and a very specific plan. Please note that I’m looking for direct impacts and, as such,
proposing informational campaigns alone is not sufficient as a radical idea, nor are descriptions of existing programs. Finally, I’m asking you to think outside the box and do something different from what’s been done before. Therefore, proposing COVID-19-specific interventions like vaccinations clinics or informational campaigns are not sufficient for this exercise (that doesn’t mean you can’t address other follow-along issues like provider burnout or the now known lack of quality public health capacity in many localities).
The final paper is a 2000-word report which will present an idea for a project your team at your work can undertake to make progress on one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Ideally, you should address how this can be implemented in the fastest and most effective way possible. This report should have your organization’s leadership as the audience in mind but requires a very limited introduction to the organization as needed for non-local audiences. Your report should include the following components and structure (the word limits for each line are just a guideline – you may deviate from this as necessary, but this gives you a general understanding of the detail with which you should address each topic):
• Section 1 – Introduction: Brief introduction to your organization and/or team. (100 words)
• Section 2 – Sustainable Development Goal: A brief description of the SDG that your report
will consider and your radical idea for accomplishing that goal. (300 words)
• Section 3 – The Problem and the Solutions – A brief discussion of the problem that you’re
trying to solve and a brief description of what your proposed solutions will be (350 words)
• Section 4 – Logic Model: A refined logic model of the existing policy or plan which
sketches out the key assumptions related to its inputs, outputs, outcomes and impact. See7Virginia University of Lynchburg
DHA 803: Leadership and Professional Issues
Dr. Wodicka – Fall 2024
https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/prep-logic-model-ts_0.pdf for a
discussion of logic models. Please consider a graphical representation rather than a narrative approach for this section. And remember to start from the outcomes in mind and work backwards! (100 words)
• Section 5 – Stakeholders: An approach to tactics building the team you need to accomplish
this goal and helping to secure buy-in from your team and your chain of command (everyone has a boss!), which also addresses potential opposition to your idea. Your recommendations should include ideas for mobilizing key stakeholders to support the proposed policy or plan
and to become agents of change. See this brief video on Stakeholder Analysis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFbyzrqFiNI for an overview of the process. While a
narrative in this section is critical, a graphical representation summarizing this information
can be helpful. (350 words)
• Section 6 – Implementation: A process of implementation with key steps and milestones. (350 words)
• Section 7 – Consequences: A brief discussion of potential risks and unintended
consequences of the proposed interventions. (250 words)
• Section 8 – Conclusions: Conclusion, including a discussion of why this work is important (200 words)
Words within graphics (such as the logic model, or stakeholder analysis, for instance) do not count towards the final work count.
For the formative assessment for this unit, you will submit your topic for my review, plus a very brief discussion. In doing so, please include a general description of the intervention that you plan to discuss. Essentially, this is a VERY brief description of sections 1, 2, and 3 above.
No AI or Plagiarisms
APA method , include all references