You can choose a country outside the United States. his assignment should be written as a policy brief from you, the Secretary of Health, to the Minister of Finance (through your own Minister, of course). As you write the brief, you must put yourself into the role of the Secretary. The paper should be five pages long, double-spaced, in 12-point Times New Roman font. It cannot be longer. The paper will be graded down by half a point for each page in excess of five pages. The paper should be written in a very clear and very crisp manner, with short sentences, short paragraphs, and as few words as possible. The paper needs to be written in a manner that will allow the aide of the Minister of Finance to brief him on the contents of the brief in about 3 minutes in a car on the way to some meeting, since that is what often really happens. The paper should be written about the country you chose for your research paper/project (below). This will allow you to use the paper to explore selected health and development issues in a variety of settings in a manner deeper than you will be able to do only in the classroom. The paper should answer the following questions: ● What is the nature and magnitude of the problem? ● Who is affected by it? ● What are the risk factors for the problem? ● What are the economic and social consequences of the problem? ● What few priority steps do you recommend to address the problem and what is your rationale for these recommendations? The policy brief shall begin with a briefing note. The briefing note should follow the above outline, with one exception, it should start with a single paragraph summarizing for the Minister of Finance all the points you want to make. The briefing note should be approximately 5-6 sentences in length and be single spaced. The briefing note should read something like this: “About # people die every year of TB in our country. The incidence of TB is #. About # people in our country get drug-resistant TB every year and about % of those who are infected with HIV have active TB disease. TB affects largely the urban and rural poor and stems from poverty, general ill health, and the lack of coverage of our health services. TB causes illness for an extended period, stops people from working, causes them to spend large amounts on health, and leads many families into poverty. DOTs is a low cost approach to TB diagnosis and treatment that we are not using sufficiently. We must immediately expand our DOTs program, starting in the north, where the disease burden is highest. We must increase case detection and treatment success rates. We must also pay special attention to the diagnosis and management of drug-resistant TB and to TB/HIV co-infection.” Write the summary and every topic sentence as if it’s the only thing that the Minister of Finance is going to read. Your evidence-based story line should include who gets the disease, why they get it, why I should care, and how the problem can be addressed in the fastest and least cost manner. When you make your argument, give information about the relative cost-effectiveness of your proposal with evidence.