CURRENT EVENTS SYNOPSIS

We will closely follow the Political Scene as the Affordable Care Act further unfolds and/or is replaced. The face of healthcare is changing right before our eyes. We will monitor anything and everything happening in the healthcare arena as appropriate.

You will follow current events through the material posted, the Kaiser Foundation website and various news sites and present your topic of interest in a paper.http://kff.org/

Class Topics to be discussed will include, but not be limited to the Affordable Care Act, the proposed new American Health Care Act, Payment, and Access to Care, Aging and End of Life Care, Physician Assisted Death, Medicare, and Special Populations, Smoking/Tobacco Use, HPV, Abortion, Human Cloning, Cosmetic Surgery, Right to Health Care, and other topics as interest you. We will monitor anything and everything happening in the healthcare arena as appropriate.

You will follow current events through the Kaiser Foundation website and news and present your topics of interest, what you have learned and offer opinion in one short paper. Your papers will include the link where you found the article, a short synopsis (minimum 500 words) of the topics and a summary of your thoughts. See the attached rubric for grading.

Papers should focus on one topic, be a minimum of 2-4 pages of text and have a minimum of three references. A cover page and References page should be included - again please refer to the following Rubric and Writing guidelines.

This assignment calls for more than simple summarization of the article/issue, although such summarization may serve as introduction for the topic.

APA Guidelines Suggestions for Current Events Papers

Content: Mandatory Paper Sections

- Cover Page (title, name, University, date)

- Introduction (at the beginning of the paper)
o General information about the topic
o Reason you selected the topic
o Thesis statement or Research question

- Literature Review
o Contains no opinion
o Just a review of the published literature on the topic

- Discussion
o This can be the author's opinion on the topic
o Do NOT write in first person

- Conclusions/Summary (at the end of the text of the paper)

- Recommendations (as needed)

- References (at the very end of the paper, after the section, Summary)
o 3 references (minimum)

- THREE references (minimum) must be considered scholarly or refereed (in other words, research articles in journals). If you have questions about terms such as scholarly and refereed, click on the (quick) tutorial, Scholarly vs. Popular Resources (http://usi.libguides.com/scholarlypopular), created by Johanna MacKay, Instructional Services Librarian at the Rice Library.

- references must be within the last 5 years