NURS 6050 / NURS 8050 – Policy and Advocacy for Improving Population Health: Presidential Agenda Comparison Grid, Analysis, and Fact Sheet Assignment

Assignment Overview

This assignment asks you to examine how U.S. presidential administrations have prioritized a specific population health concern, trace the policy and financial commitments made across three consecutive administrations, and translate that analysis into a practical advocacy tool. The final product combines a structured comparison grid, a written analysis, and a one-page fact sheet or talking points brief suitable for direct use with a legislator or their staff.

Course Context

Healthcare policy does not emerge in a vacuum. Presidential administrations set the tone for what receives federal attention, funding, and legislative priority. Nurses, as the largest segment of the healthcare workforce, are positioned to influence those priorities — but only when they understand how agendas are built, maintained, and funded. This assignment develops that analytical capability.

Assignment Instructions

To Prepare

Review the healthcare agenda priorities of the current sitting U.S. president and the two previous presidential administrations.
Select one population health issue that was addressed — formally or through resource allocation — by all three administrations.
Reflect on how financial resources were directed toward your selected issue under each administration.
Consider the strategies nurses and healthcare advocates use to communicate the urgency of a health issue to policymakers.

Deliverable Format: 1- to 2-Page Comparison Grid + 1-Page Analysis + 1-Page Fact Sheet

Use the Agenda Comparison Grid Template provided in the Learning Resources. Complete all three parts within that template.

Part 1: Agenda Comparison Grid

Complete the grid using the current U.S. president and the two preceding administrations as your three comparison points. Your grid must address all of the following:

Population Health Concern: Identify and briefly describe the health issue you selected. Include the key social, economic, environmental, or behavioral factors that contribute to it at the population level.
Administrative Agenda Focus: For each administration, describe how the selected health issue appeared (or did not appear) in the broader policy agenda. Reference specific policy initiatives, executive orders, legislative priorities, or programmatic changes.
Financial and Resource Allocation: Identify what funding, staffing, regulatory, or programmatic resources each administration dedicated to this issue. Where applicable, include budget figures, departmental allocations, or grant programs.
Administrative Approach: Explain how each administration’s approach differed in philosophy, strategy, or method — for example, market-based versus regulatory, federal versus state-led, preventive versus treatment-focused.

Part 2: Agenda Comparison Grid Analysis

Using the completed grid from Part 1, write a structured analysis that addresses each of the following questions. This section should reflect critical thinking about policy mechanisms, not just a description of what each president did.

Administrative Agency Responsibility: Which federal administrative agency (e.g., HHS, CDC, CMS, HRSA, SAMHSA) would most likely carry the primary responsibility for addressing the health issue you selected? Justify your choice based on the agency’s mandate, jurisdiction, and past involvement.
Agenda Entry and Maintenance: How do you think your selected health issue gained — or would gain — placement on each president’s agenda? What factors (political, economic, epidemiological, social) help an issue stay on the agenda across administrations rather than falling away between election cycles?
Champion/Entrepreneur/Sponsor: For each of the three administrations, identify who you would select as the most effective policy entrepreneur, champion, or sponsor to advance this issue. This may be a legislator, cabinet secretary, advocacy organization, or prominent public figure. Justify your selections.

Part 3: Fact Sheet or Talking Points Brief

Develop a one-page Fact Sheet or Talking Points Brief using Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. This document should be formatted for use in an actual meeting with a legislator, congressional staffer, or senior policymaker — not as an academic essay. Clarity, brevity, and persuasive precision are essential.

Your Fact Sheet or Talking Points Brief must address:

Issue Summary: Summarize why this healthcare issue is urgent, who it affects, and what happens if it remains inadequately addressed at the policy level. Use data where available.
Legislative Relevance: Justify why this issue belongs on the current legislative agenda. Connect it to existing policy frameworks, federal priorities, or demonstrated public health impact.
The Nurse’s Role in Agenda Setting: Clearly articulate why nurses are uniquely qualified to advocate for this issue. Address the nurse’s professional, ethical, and structural position in relation to health policy advocacy.

The Fact Sheet should be visually organized — use headers, bullet points, and data callouts as appropriate for the format. It must be immediately usable, not a draft that requires further formatting by someone else.

Submission Requirements

Complete the Agenda Comparison Grid Template in full (Parts 1 and 2): 1 to 2 pages
Part 2 Analysis: 1 page
Part 3 Fact Sheet or Talking Points Brief: 1 page (Word or PowerPoint)
Minimum of 3 peer-reviewed or authoritative policy sources cited in APA 7th Edition format
In-text citations required in Parts 1 and 2; sources listed on a reference page appended to the template

Grading Rubric / Marking Criteria

Part 1: Agenda Comparison Grid

Criterion	Excellent (90–100%)	Proficient (80–89%)	Developing (70–79%)	Unsatisfactory (Below 70%)
Description of health concern and contributing factors	Precise, evidence-informed description with clear identification of population-level determinants	Accurate with some depth; minor gaps in factor identification	General description; contributing factors underdeveloped	Vague or incorrect; factors absent
Administrative agenda focus per administration	Specific policies, orders, or programs cited for all three administrations with clear focus articulated	Most administrations addressed; one may lack specificity	Broad statements without specific policy references	Missing or inaccurate
Financial and resource allocation	Concrete data on funding, programs, and resource priorities for all three administrations	Some data present; one administration may lack specifics	Generalized financial references without amounts or programs	Absent or unverifiable
Approach comparison	Clear philosophical and strategic distinctions drawn between all three administrations	Distinctions present but surface-level for at least one	Descriptions present but differences not clearly analyzed	No meaningful comparison

Part 2: Agenda Comparison Grid Analysis

Criterion	Excellent	Proficient	Developing	Unsatisfactory
Administrative agency identification and justification	Correct agency named with thorough jurisdictional and historical justification	Correct agency; justification present but partial	Agency named but justification weak or generic	Incorrect or absent
Agenda entry and retention analysis	Sophisticated analysis of political, epidemiological, and economic mechanisms across all three administrations	Adequate analysis; some mechanisms identified across administrations	Limited to surface observations; mechanisms not analyzed	Absent or off-topic
Champion/sponsor identification and justification	Named, realistic, and well-justified champion for each administration with rationale tied to policy context	Named for each; justification adequate but uneven	Generic or poorly justified selections	Missing or implausible

Part 3: Fact Sheet or Talking Points Brief

Criterion	Excellent	Proficient	Developing	Unsatisfactory
Issue summary and legislative relevance	Data-driven, persuasive, and tailored to a legislative audience; immediately actionable	Clear and accurate; minor gaps in persuasive framing or data use	Present but underdeveloped; reads as academic rather than advocacy-focused	Missing, inaccurate, or unusable in advocacy context
Nurse’s role in agenda setting	Compelling, specific justification grounded in professional standards and structural positioning	Accurate but broadly stated; limited specificity	Mentioned but not meaningfully argued	Absent or incorrect
Format and professional presentation	Polished, visually appropriate for legislative use; fits one page precisely	Mostly professional; minor formatting issues	Readable but not formatted for professional advocacy use	Unformatted or exceeds/falls well short of one page

Writing, APA, and Scholarly Sourcing

Criterion	Excellent	Proficient	Developing	Unsatisfactory
APA 7th Edition adherence	Consistent, accurate citations and references throughout	Minor APA errors; no pattern of mistakes	Multiple APA errors; some sources missing	Significant citation failures or missing references
Writing quality	Precise, professional, and analytically clear throughout	Generally clear with minor lapses	Readable but inconsistent in clarity or precision	Unclear, disorganized, or below professional standard

Sample Answer Writing Guide:

Mental health policy in the United States has functioned as a persistent but chronically underfunded priority across multiple presidential administrations, shaped by competing pressures from the opioid crisis, insurance parity enforcement, and the post-pandemic surge in anxiety and depression diagnoses. The Obama administration advanced mental health parity through the Affordable Care Act and the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, expanding Medicaid coverage for behavioral health services and allocating federal dollars to community mental health centers. Under the Trump administration, mental health funding was restructured through block grants and the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline framework was legislated, though critics noted simultaneous proposals to reduce Medicaid funding raised contradictions in stated priorities. The Biden administration continued and expanded 988 infrastructure, directed SAMHSA toward crisis care capacity, and framed mental health explicitly as a public health emergency, backing that framing with historic investment levels in workforce and access programs. As Ettman et al. (2020) demonstrated in a nationally representative study, the prevalence of depression symptoms tripled during the early COVID-19 period — from 8.5% pre-pandemic to 27.8% — underscoring the scale of unmet need that any serious legislative agenda must address (https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.19686).

The gap between policy intent and actual behavioral health access remains a defining challenge across all three administrations reviewed in this assignment. Data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration consistently show that fewer than half of adults with a mental illness receive treatment in any given year, a figure that has barely shifted despite decades of legislative action (SAMHSA, 2023). Nurses occupy a critical and often overlooked position in this landscape — as the primary point of contact between patients and the healthcare system, they are equipped to identify need, deliver brief interventions, refer appropriately, and document outcomes in ways that inform population-level data. Professional nursing organizations including the American Nurses Association have formalized advocacy as a core nursing competency, and the integration of nurse-led policy engagement into health system governance models has demonstrated measurable impact on agenda prioritization at both the state and federal levels (Mason et al., 2021). Students completing this assignment should approach the fact sheet component as a genuine professional tool — one that could realistically be placed in front of a congressional staffer — rather than as a summary document written for an academic audience.

In a 3- to 4-page assignment using the provided template, analyze the healthcare policy agendas of three U.S. presidents, identify financial resource allocations, evaluate administrative agency responsibility, and develop a professional talking points brief for use with a legislator or policymaker. Use the Agenda Comparison Grid Template to compare three presidential healthcare agendas, complete a policy analysis, and create a one-page Fact Sheet that communicates a population health issue to a legislator and justifies the nurse’s advocacy role.

References

Ettman, C. K., Abdalla, S. M., Cohen, G. H., Sampson, L., Vivier, P. M., & Galea, S. (2020). Prevalence of depression symptoms in US adults before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. JAMA Network Open, 3(9), e2019686. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.19686

Mason, D. J., Dickson, E., McLemore, M. R., & Perez, G. A. (Eds.). (2021). Policy and politics in nursing and health care (8th ed.). Elsevier. https://evolve.elsevier.com/cs/product/9780323554985

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2023). Key substance use and mental health indicators in the United States: Results from the 2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.samhsa.gov/data/report/2022-nsduh-annual-national-report