Author: Anjelica Torcivia

Furthering the Conversation “Improving End-Of-Life Care: A Public Health Call to Action”

During this class discussion we talked a lot about the beginning of this piece. From the first word she is using many different techniques to get the readers attention. For example by using the word “we” as her first word she has already included the reader in what she is about to talk about. Her writing is very straightforward and she makes it easy for the reader to understand what she is trying to say.

Another thing I noticed from her piece was the personal anecdotes that she places throughout. With them she tells the story of her own father and his end-of-life care. Spacing them out the way she did helps get the interest of the reader and keep it throughout the piece. They become immersed in her story and want to find out what happened. This is a good technique as it also helps split up the academic information and charts she has included. Even though academics will be reading it I think her use of a personal story helps keep their interest.

Overall I think she does a good job of balancing the academic information with more easy to read stuff. She is also successful in writing something that truly is a call to action. The way she talks about how everyone will die one day is her way of uniting anyone who reads what she has written. Because this is something that will affect every person it is something that deserves peoples immediate attention. This especially means people in the public health field because she believes these issues directly correlate to that field.

Reading Notes for “We Need Better Information About Nutrition”

This article was written in the opinion section of the NY Times as part of a debate series on whether we need more advice as a country on how to eat well. It was written by Marion Nestle who works in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University. She has also written a book and has a blog about food politics. She wrote this piece so people would be motivated to try and do something about what foods are available. When it comes down to it these are things that policymakers and government officials need to start looking at and doing something about.

She believes that Americans definitely need more information about eating well and that our obesity problem is proof of that. Often times people get conflicting advice because everyone wants their product to sell so they say it is the best. Food companies want to sell as much food as possible so they can make the largest profit possible. It is hard for people to resist food when it is sold everywhere they go. The basic principles for healthy eating are easily said, but hard to actually follow.

She believes we need to change the environment that food is available in so people can make healthier decisions. One of the problems is that fresh produce is so expensive making it hard for people to afford to eat healthy. She emphasizes that the farm bill needs to be fixed so these things can happen.

Reading Notes for “The Jargon Trap”

This piece was written by David Tuller in the opinion section of the NY Times. He is a writer and academic coordinator at UC: Berkeley in their joint masters program in public health and journalism. He wrote this particular article with the purpose of helping the reader move away from academic writing so they can address a larger audience.

He started thinking about this while in grad school after he submitted an article he thought was very good to his editor. The comments he received were that it was extremely dull and there was nothing she could do to fix it. He realized he had put too much jargon in it and there was no way regular people would be able to follow it and understand his points. Once he became an instructor he wanted to help students with the transition between academic writing and writing for everyday people.

His first rule for doing this is to forget formal references, which means no footnotes or bibliography. This is because most readers will not care which journal published what or the exact specifics from the article. You can use the general ideas from the sources, just do not specifically cite them. His second rule is no acronyms. This can be confusing for a reader who is not familiar with certain acronyms academics have come up with. They can also have multiple meaning sometimes, which can also be confusing. He has found that people who use these techniques actually feel freed in their writing and are able to get their ideas across better.

He also shares his basic rules, which are as follows:

  1. Share the most important thing first, then tell the rest of the story
  2. Keep it simple
  3. Use the active voice
  4. Be specific
  5. Take things piece by piece

Furthering the Conversation

I am looking at how immunotherapy treatments can affect the lives of people with terminal cancer. Currently these treatments are only experimental and most patients choose chemo, which can cause many negative side effects, or to forgo treatment and live in some sort of hospice care until their death. These new treatments have the potential to give patients more time with their loved ones, but will not destroy their bodies in the same way that chemo does. One of the main issues with terminal patients getting these treatments is they are expensive and insurance companies are less likely to pay for clinical trials, especially if it is for someone who has been diagnosed as terminal. My target audience is the patients and their families because there are many instances where doctors do not give all of the options or suggest chemo because it is more tested. I think it is important for people to be informed of all of their options before making a decision. I see my paper taking the route of an informational essay and because it is intended for people who won’t necessarily have science degrees it will be easier to read and understand than a more scholarly article would be.

A Place at the Table Review

This documentary showed a correlation between hunger and obesity that people who do not struggle to put food on the table may not realize exists. To do this they showed a child at her physical talking to the doctor about her eating habits. When she said she usually has some sort of chips for an after school snack her doctor suggested she ask her mother to buy something healthier like fruit. This was followed by an interview in the girls home with her mother talking about how expensive food is and how when she is at the grocery store if the chips are cheaper she will choose them over the produce, but when produce is on sale she opts for that. After this personal story they cut to an expert in the field who explains how many people understand the difference between healthy and unhealthy, however they cannot afford the healthier options. They go on to explain how many of these problems lie within public policy because the government is unwilling to spend the money it would take to make people, especially children, healthier. In order to get their message across effectively they overlay personal stories with experts who explain what actually needs to be done. This way people who watch will form an emotional attachment to the families whose stories are shared. This way more people in the general population can gain an understanding of what is happening with people living in their country, state, town, and possibly neighborhood. They also showed a doctor who advocates for these issues take a group of women from Philly to Washington to talk to Congress about putting more money into healthy school lunches. Ultimately they were unsuccessful and Congress ended up taking some money from food stamps to pay for the healthier lunches. This story is there to motivate people to get involved and write to their Congressmen, volunteer at a food bank, or any other way they can help people in their communities eat.

Class Notes 3/28/16

Rewriting

  • Coming to terms– acknowledging where the author is coming from
  • Forwarding– taking the authors ideas and putting them into a new environment 
  • Countering– Naysayers, opposition research, how will people question argument, strengthen claim, acknowledge limitations
  • Taking an approach– what a text is trying to do and how they do it, look at sources for help taking your approach, developing your own stance, being influenced by a particular source giving you insight into how you want to go about your work (their language and assembly) 

Sources

  • What has been influential in sources you’ve looked at and how will you use it for your work?
  • Make sure you find a variety of sources

How to find sources

  • Library database
  • Complicating your research link in Blackboard (variety of perspectives is important for a well rounded argument)
  • Backlink searching on google
  • Seminal articles- who are the most cited people

 

Handouts Tab- note taking sheet for sources, rounding out the conversation WS(Should be handed in)

Homework

  • Annotated Bibliography due Friday
  • Come to class Wednesday to take notes on documentary

Class Notes 2/24/2016

“Writers who make strong claims need to map their claims relative to those of other people” (They Say I Say 30).

Agenda:

  1. Make sense of the genre of scholarly articles (new genre for us)
  2. Summary (as a tool of research writing)

Genre

  • Category/Type (different styles) short story, poem, etc
  • Music, film, books
  • like/don’t like
  • sorting tool
  • what makes a genre? perception, subject/content, style
  • organized (easier to find stuff)
  • flexible
  • response to a recurring rhetorical situation
  • figure out how genre works: better writers, better readers (use similar techniques), more flexible writers (tools for new situations)

Article Activity

  • Intro/early childhood
  • relate concepts (identify), why?(we could do more)
  • how they do it
  • questions (how education/social science overlaps with public health)
  • methodology of studies 
  • survey of literature in fields of education of public health looking at crossover
  • k-12
  • facts using pro and cons, open for interpretation
  • free lunch-more aware of healthy choices, could increase obesity (both sides)
  • smaller class size does not have as  positive an outcome as they were looking for
  • abstract
  • what they did how they did it
  • review evidence from studies, which educational components are necessary for good health outcomes at all education levels?
  • higher ed
  • factors already in play continue into higher ed, good education, good college experience. Not as good education will lead to no college or not as productive an experience
  • college=better health
  • increase people going, doesn’t reduce health inequalities, then the elite schools will have better health
  • not all govt controlled
  • conclusion
  • summarized studies, warrant new studies, use public education to promote public health

Scholarly Article Format

  • Introduction
  • Literature Review
  • Methodology
  • Data
  • Interpretation/Findings
  • Conclusion (should give a “So What?”)

Reminders:

  • Service Reflection #2 due by the end of the day on Friday
  • Bring a scholarly article related to your topic of interest to class on Monday
  • Service Reflection #3 is due on Monday as well

In-Class Activity 2/22

  1. I am interested in how end-of-life care is viewed by family members. Once their loved one is gone are they happy with how they were taken care of? Was it hospice care or in a hospital or both? What factors lead them to decide if it was a “good” death or “bad” death?
  2. Search Terms: end-of-life care, hospice care, public health, good death, bad death
  3. Here is an article titled Family Perspectives on Aggressive Cancer Care Near the End of Life. It was published in Boston, MA in the Journal of the American Medical Association and has multiple authors.
  4. The authors use many testimonials where they interviewed a close friend of family member of the deceased patient about their experiences. This has a few different purposes depending on what was said in the interview. This is an example of both illustrating and contextualizing. If you compile all of the results you get statistics on end-of-life care, but if you look at it individually and use certain stories the person’s experience is being illustrated to the reader.