first draft

Phoebe Priel

English 102

Mr. Paudel

3 February, 2015

            In the field of public health, there are many audiences that will read or analyze the information. The field itself is a very broad one and there are many different areas that communicate and work with public health. The main types of writing are informational pieces, informing people about some kind of public health issue. You can find all kinds of informational articles relating to public health online, either from a college website or just an article. When I interviewed an advisor at the University of Louisville, she said that the types of writing she mostly does are informational/persuasive pieces directed towards students or upcoming freshman informing them about public health. There are so many health related professions that work with public health, but all of them have one goal, to inform the public of any audience, about public health.

            I interviewed Tammi Thomas who is an academic Public Health advisor at the University of Louisville, and she was able to give me a lot of good information about the kinds of writing done in that field, and the kinds of writing that she does in her position. She said that most of the writing that she does are information/persuasive papers to students looking into majoring in public health. She provides students with a lot of valuable information about the major, and whether or not it is the right major for them. She said that her writings are somewhat persuasive, but the main goal is to reassure the student if public health is right for them. Public health isn’t for everyone, so when she talks to students or writes to them about it, it’s not necessarily convincing them that they should major in it, but maybe help them cross public health off of their list of possible majors, so they are able to narrow down their options. Thomas also informed me that most of the writing done within her field is informative, and that the majority of things writing are informing people about health. Health is so important to our culture, and the only way to spread the word is to inform people about the latest health updates or new ways to make peoples lives healthier and happier. Many people in our society want to be healthy and live a healthier life style, but they don’t know how or where to start. That’s where public health articles come into play.

            One of the academic articles that I found online was a study done on the hygiene of street vendor foods. This article consisted of data collection, interviews, statistics and more. It explains what the purpose of “ready to go” food, but also explains the main concerns. I chose this article because it gave me a good example of all the other aspects that go into writing an informational piece in public health. The article addressed both the bad and good of street vendor foods and gave the audience plenty of credible information to back up what the author was saying. The author also explains that although this study has been conducted before, there were a couple of things wrong with the research, and that was one of the reasons he did his own study.

It’s important to be accurate about your information when you general audience is the public. Public health is becoming more and more relevant and necessary to peoples lives, and that’s why these informational articles are written.

            Another article that I found online was one analyzing and comparing fish and meat. The article addressed all concerns that are would be a factor in someone’s everyday life, that might effect what they were eating.  It talks about what is more convenient to the normal person, or the price differences and what one can afford. It also talks about the socio economic status and culture that we live in, and how that can be a factor to the types of meat we chose to eat. So as you can see this is once again an informational article. The thing that I liked about this article is that it brought up all the factors that really do have an effect on the healthy choices made by our society. It addresses all the concerns, and doesn’t necessarily pick a side, but mostly just analyzes the differences between the two and why one is more popular than the other.

            One of the other articles that I chose was a non-academic one that I found online addressing the growing concerns of tobacco use in India. They give you their step-by-step process in conducting the research. This article gives you a ton of information about the harms that are caused “due to direct or indirect use of tobacco.” Although it is not considered an academic article, it still gives you the information that you would. Rather than it giving you a bunch of statistics and comparing and contrasting like most of the other articles I found, in this one, the research is actually conducted and that is the majority of where this information comes from. The article explains the steps that were taken, the before and after and background information. At the end, the author says that, “Of the 720 students who completed the first intervention, only 701 students completed the second intervention (dropout rate 2.64%)” this is showing us that the study did in fact work, and this statistic within the study makes the information credible.