Mosquito Mess: Your oceanside community has had a long-standing mosquito

Town Hall Presentation Instructions A Town Hall meeting is an informal event that is open to the members of a community, usually designed to address a topic of concern. The public has the opportunity to ask questions and the community leadership can get a better understanding of what concerns are most important to the community. In this module, you and your team role play both sides of a Town Hall Meeting by:

• Presenting an environmental health issue with your team members.

• Responding to questions from the concerned community (your non team-member colleagues).

• Assuming the viewpoint of the community when you respond to other teams’ presentations.

• Reflecting on and reviewing Interprofessional teamwork in addressing an environmental public health problem.

Develop your presentation as if you were presenting it in a Town Hall Meeting for the public at a local community center. In this Town Hall Meeting, you are involved on both sides of an environmental health issue. Assume you are part of a team of public health specialists employed at a state health department or ministry of health. In this role, you and your team members are responsible for assessing the scenario you received from your Instructor in Module 1 for the associated health risk to the population, and for conveying that information to members of a community who are concerned about this environmental health issue.

The guiding questions you need to address in this presentation are related to the core functions of public health and the 10 Essential Public Health Services. You should rely on the resources for this course as well as the background gained from your prior public health coursework to develop your narrated slide presentation. You may wish to review prior policy, epidemiology, program evaluation, or other relevant coursework. Create a slide presentation and narrate it using your computer microphone or other means of capturing audio. Use your team’s Town Hall Meeting Group Discussion area to build your presentation as a team.

The quality of the environment is inexorably linked to human health and protecting the environment is an important goal in many countries. Understating the complex and interrelated environmental factors and systems that contribute to population health and disease protection is essential in public health practice. Responding to complex public health challenges requires understanding of the interplay between the environment, disease, public health, policy and the community. As an example, assessment and monitoring of environmental impacts related to production and consumption of resources is critically important to protecting public health. Agencies may regulate the storage, transport, and disposal of hazardous wastes, and public health entities may establish preparedness programs for environmental impacts associated with natural disasters.

Less developed parts of the world however may lack environmental and public health infrastructure, presenting unique challenges. In this module, you focus on solutions and assess ways that these impacts can be mitigated or prevented by using a systems thinking tools approach. You received a scenario in Module 1 and have been working with your

team to develop the team contract, the progress report, and the presentation. In this module you finalize your slide presentation and present it in a simulated “Town Hall Meeting” as though you were presenting it for the public at a local community center.

The Assignment

The presentation must be 13–21 slides, not including references. The narration should take about one minute per slide, on average. To effectively educate your target audience (members of a concerned community), your presentation must include the following information and take into account a holistic public health view, as related to the connections among humans, zoonotic disease, and ecosystem health:

• A title slide with the environmental health issue identified

• A slide providing your names and the objectives of the presentation, assuring your audience of your team’s capacity to address this issue as competent representatives of a public health agency (each team member can introduce himself/herself)

• 2–3 slides to diagnose and investigate the hazard, describing the environmental health issue, and defining characteristics of possible exposures (e.g. what chemicals/hazards are present, what human health issues may be caused by the chemicals/hazards in question, fate/transport, environmental & biological persistence, as well as review of ecosystem and zoonotic disease health concerns)

• 2–3 slides informing the community of the potential risks for human exposure to the hazard, including how people may be exposed, susceptible populations, and known dose-response information

• 1–3 slides informing the community about exposure prevention and other strategies that would be useful to members of your community to avoid adverse health outcomes

• 1–3 slides that describe innovative solutions, including any regulatory basis for the planned process (e.g., enforcement or creation of new policies/mandates), other agencies or expertise involved, and how you might mobilize community members and organizations to be a part of the process. This should include a review of the unique and interrelated environmental factors that contribute to population health and disease protection using a systems thinking approach

• 2–3 slides describing how the health department plans to monitor the health status of the community with respect to your scenario (make sure to consider a holistic public health view as related to the connections among human, zoonotic disease, and ecosystem health)

• 1–2 slides that describe how your solutions will be evaluated. Briefly explain the evaluation design, including outcomes to be measured, and a few strengths/limitations of your approach.

• A slide that relates this local issue to a broader context and includes a final take-home message that describes the implications of this issue for positive social change

• A slide that describes the systems thinking tool used in assessing the environmental health scenario

• References – alphabetized and in APA format

• Include a transcript of your narration in a separate Word document. This transcript is important to include in the event your viewers have trouble getting the audio narration to work. It may be simplest to write out your narration first that you intend, then record your narration, and then go back and edit the narration to capture what you actually said.

• Aim the level of your presentation to your target audience, who are members of a diverse community. If you use any images, be sure they are public domain or your own and be aware of copyright laws.

• Cite the sources that you used. Put in-text citations on your slides to be clear what portions of the text came from what source and then list the full sources in APA format at the bottom of the slide in a small font.

By Day 1 of Week 10

The facilitator/team lead assures consensus and posts the team’s Town Hall Presentation and accompanying narration transcript document to the Module 5: Discussion. When replying to this thread, be certain to identify your team as defined by your instructor (e.g., Group A, Group B, Group C). Additionally, the facilitator/team lead will submit the final narration transcript to the Module 5 Assignment 2 submission area. As a back-up, post the final version of your presentation and transcript as attachments to your Groups Discussion area.

Note: The team facilitator/team lead must post the completed Town Hall Meeting Presentation in the Module 5: Discussion area.