Assignment 1: Policy Memo on Malnutrition Your first assignment will build on one of your activities in week 2. In that week, you will be asked to imagine that you are a health advisor to the Minister of Health in an upper middle-income country of your choice (e.g. Malaysia, South Africa, Brazil) and that you have been tasked with making a list of the three most important facts about the state of malnutrition in your chosen country, as well as three policy recommendations to address this burden. In this assignment, you are going to continue acting as the health advisor to the Minister of Health of your upper middle-income country of choice. The Minister of Health has asked you to write a policy memo that he can send to the Prime Minister arguing for greater attention to be paid to the problem of malnutrition by the government. Furthermore, he wants to make the case that only a truly multi-sectoral approach will address the all the determinants of malnutrition. This will require you to describe: a) the determinants and causes of different forms of malnutrition; b) why it’s important to address malnutrition; and c) the laws, policies, programmes and interventions that should be considered. Remember that although the policy memo is addressed to the Prime Minister; the audience includes other senior members of the government. A policy memo or brief is a professionally written document designed to communicate information about a particular policy issue, usually in a concise manner. It is often written to advise a decision-maker on how to answer a particular policy question or to make a decision. As such they often contain recommendations, or provide a list of alternative recommendations with their pros and cons that the decision-maker can consider. A policy memo or brief is not usually written in the style of an academic essay, but it should be based on evidence and academic analysis. It should be concise, structured and tailored to the specific needs of its primary target audience. In this module, your assignments are designed to assess your ability to: Write persuasively, concisely and rigorously about a “real-world” issue; Craft a document for the needs of a targeted (non-general) and non-academic audience; Imagine and anticipate the perspectives, assumptions and concerns of a decision-maker about a policy issue; and Use academic information to support advocacy or recommendation for a specific course of action.
