The Roosevelt Institution
Feature Articles
http://rooseveltinstitution.org/policy/health/rooseveltrx/publication/features
Feature Articles – Suggested Topics
- History of health reform
- Franklin D. Roosevelt – Why was health care not part of the New Deal and what can we learn from FDR’s example today?
- Medicare and Medicaid – How did LBJ and community activists mobilize support for the most significant US health reform ever?
- Clinton health reform – What went wrong last time?
- Current politics of health care
o Comparison of Democrat and Republican health plans, with a particular focus on how they impact young adults
- Legal/ economic barriers to reform – ERISA, Pay-go, balanced budget laws, etc.
o Role of interest groups and social movements – How are interest groups shaping politics and what is the role of the citizen activist?
- Framing and communication
- Cost-effectiveness – What are the benefits and limitations of cost-effective analysis of health issues? Is spending on health necessarily bad?
- The politics of fear – An examination of gain-loss frames and “Harry and Louise” tactics to stymie efforts at change
- Human rights framing – What are the benefits and limitations of framing health as a human right?
Writers may suggest other topics for each of these sections, however, all articles must be approved and assigned by the section editor. After the topics are assigned, writers will work closely with the section editors to develop their essays.
If you are interested in writing for a particular section, please e-mail a statement of interest and a short writing sample to
rxfeatures@rooseveltinstitution.org by
May 15, 2008.
Framing and Communication[1]
From a political perspective, framing and communication have widespread consequences. Public opinions greatly influence policymaker priorities and behavior and according to Deborah Stone the essence of policymaking is the struggle over ideas. How policies, issues and ideas are framed can shift the task of passing legislation, advancing a policy at the legislative level, convincing a targeted group that a policy position should be supported, or creating a communications campaign to promote a specific policy position. Framing an issue also provides more than just details about individuals or communities, it requires systems-level thinking about the trends these groups share. When trying to change policy priorities, the challenge of communications becomes reframing – providing a different lens for the processing of new information.
The Roosevelt Institute is requesting papers that examine how the public thinks about a particular health, social or political issue, specifically:
1) What is the public discourse on the issue and how is that discourse influenced by the way it is framed?
2) How can an issue be reframed to evoke a different way of thinking, one that illuminates a broader range of alternative policy choices?
[1] The section definition and goals were borrowed from concepts described in the Frame Works Institute’s Framing Public Issues Toolkit (http://www.frameworksinstitute.org/strategicanalysis/FramingPublicIssuesfinal.pdf)