Topic: chinese health system

Type of paper: Term paper

Discipline: Health Care and Life Sciences : Health Care

Format or citation style: MLA

1)    Introduction.  Provide a brief overview/outline of what you will do in the rest of the paper.  This should include a brief statement of your research question, your plan for answering it, and a summary of what you conclude.

2)    Background.  This is generally a section that describes the context of your research question.  If you are analyzing a policy change, for example, you would explain the setting (e.g., what part of the health system are you talking about) and the motivation for the policy change (e.g., were people dissatisfied with how the relevant portion of the health sector was performing). 

3)    Analysis Plan.  This section would typically explain what data or other information you have assembled and how you plan to use it to answer your research question.

4)    Results. In this section you would describe how you have executed your analysis plan and summarize the resulting evidence.  Your description of you findings should include any caveats.  As a researcher it is important to be up front about reasons why your analysis may not definitively answer your research question.  It is often important, for example, to carefully distinguish between correlation and causation in any data you have analyzed.

5)    Conclusion.  The conclusion can be quite brief.  At minimum it would typically contain a restatement of the question you’ve addressed and the conclusions at which you’ve arrived. 

6)    References.  The reference list should report all sources from which you obtained background information, data, and, more generally, that shaped your thinking about your topic.  In economics essays the sources for particular facts and claims are typically cited by parenthetically within the main text.  For example, if David Cutler’s “Your Money or Your Life” is your source for the claim that quality reporting is essential for getting health care markets to generate value-oriented competition, you could write: “Competition in health care markets can only be expected to increase value if coupled with adequate reporting on the quality of health care providers (Cutler, 2004).”  You would then provide a full reference to Cutler’s book in the reference section.  You are free to follow whatever reference system you prefer (e.g., Chicago Manual of Style) so long as you are consistent.

7)    Tables and Figures.  The last section of your paper should contain your tables and figures.  Make sure to couple each table and figure with a detailed explanatory note.  The note should report the sources for any data shown in the table or figure.  It should also define any variables displayed in the figure or in the rows and columns of the table.  It should be possible to interpret tables and figures without having to find the discussion that appears in the paper’s main text.

Additional tips for economics essay writing can be found here:
http://writing.ku.edu/sites/writing.drupal.ku.edu/files/docs/Guide_Writing_Economics.pdf

 and the professor gave me some ideas “Your proposal a broad effort on the part of the Chinese government to expand health care access to rural areas.  You will need to narrow your paper down to one of the specific policy initiatives.  It sounds like you may be able to analyze data that describe differences in maternal and infant mortality rates across regions of China.  This could provide your paper with an interesting piece of analysis.  If you focus on long-run changes, I think it would be important for your paper to make comparisons with changes in health outcomes in another country that has experienced rapid income growth.”