The literature review provides an overview of the social epidemiological aspects of your topic. It summarises broad trends in the literature on your topic and highlights important points in selected articles. The review task includes:

1. Outlining the relevant social, environmental and economic contexts that relate to your condition and discuss the factors that influence those contexts;
2. Critiquing previous national and international epidemiological data and research with a particular emphasis on the gaps that may exist in our understanding of the impact of social factors on your condition.
3. Considering the relevance of the reported statistics and findings to advocating for health promotion and disease prevention in public health practice.

While the assignment is individual, the topic will be assigned to your group and this will be the topic of your assessment 2 (group) and 3 (individual). In other words, all members of a group will work on the same topic throughout the term. However, the Literature Review is an INDIVIDUAL task: you may not work together with your classmates to write the review.

Assessment topics include:

1. Antibiotic resistance
2. Climate change
3. Diarrhoeal diseases
4. Hepatitis B
5. Pandemics
6. Rheumatic heart disease

Choosing the literature to include in your assignment is important. Only peer-reviewed scholarly material should be used. You need to note various views and approaches contained in the literature and to choose works to include without bias or preconceived ideas. Journal articles are often more relevant than books due to the long lead time between the writing and publication of books and because journals are often the forum where the latest thinking on a topic appears. The University library has a number of online guides that will be helpful in preparing your assignment. You can also consult a University librarian or your lecturer for additional advice. However, it is well worth taking some time to learn how to use the Library and its academic databases, how to conduct literature searches, and how to recognize the best resources for your needs.

Assignment 1 will be assessed by the following criteria:

• Selection of relevant, current and appropriate items from the scholarly literature: 20%
• Thorough and accurate summary and critique of the selected literature: 20%
• Discussion of social, economic, and environmental context and the factors that influence them: 20%
• Presentation of various views represented in the literature and discussion of their strengths and weaknesses: 20%
• Use of clear, concise language and linear presentation of argument: 10%
• All work submitted is the student's original words and ideas and all information from sources is properly cited, including direct quotations: 10%

The group presentation presents the social epidemiological background of your condition and a critique of the data that were part of your literature review (assessment #1). The 10 minute presentation will:

1. Explain how social factors influence your condition and identify and critique the social epidemiological data.
2. Identify high-risk groups and show the way in which social factors may affect this risk. Vulnerable groups might include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, individuals with low income, older adults, or other specific groups that would be impacted by strategies to address the chosen topic in the community of interest.

Your presentation slides must include the following:

• Title slide – include the condition and the full name and ID number of each student in the group;
• Nature and proximal cause of the condition;
• Social epidemiological factors that affect the development and progression of the condition;
• Mechanisms by which social factors contribute to the condition;
• Life course factors that affect the condition;
• Critique of existing social epidemiological data, including strengths and weaknesses of these data;
• A slide containing the references cited on all slides.
• Each slide (excepting the Title and Reference slides) should include background research information in the Notes area for that slide.

Each group will prepare a single presentation. Each student prepares the material for at least one slide in the presentation which must be identified with the student’s name, and prepare the text (background information) for presentation for his or her slide.

Your slides should be easy to read, uncluttered, and facilitate understanding among members of the audience. You will be told to stop after 10 minutes, regardless of whether your group has finished its presentation, so it is important to plan carefully and time your presentation before class. The group may choose one or two students to present or each member may present his or her own slide.

There are many guides to Powerpoint presentations available on the internet and through the Library. If you have not given this type of presentation in the past, it would be helpful to consult some of the reference material on effective design and presentation.

Assignment 2 will be assessed by the following criteria:

• Epidemiological data relevant to the topic are presented and summarized: 20%
• Critique of data is presented: 20%
• Needs of vulnerable groups relevant to implementing a strategy to address the assigned condition are outlined and discussed: 20%
• Student's individual contribution is significant and shows understanding of the topic as well as of the element presented: 20%
• Language of the presentation (oral and written) is clear and easily understood: 10%
• All work reflects the students' own thinking and words, referencing is correctly and accurately done, and any direct quotations are properly identified according to academic convention: 10%

The third assessment task is a report that could be presented to a local health department responsible for planning initiatives to address your condition topic. This report involves:

1. Reviewing and critiquing the social epidemiological data currently available to inform public health practice on your topic;
2. Outlining what additional social epidemiological data would need to be collected. Justifying how and why these data would be needed, and at what stage of a strategy implementation (prior, during, and after); and
3. Assessing how the social epidemiological data would be used to inform other practitioners, researchers and policy makers.

In preparing this assessment task, it is important to remember that your intended audience is a local health department. You will need to balance the technical demands of the topic with the needs of this audience, with the understanding that that the aim of such a report in real life would be to inform practitioners working in the field and underpin policy development. In other words, you will need to focus on the aspects of your topic that are most relevant in the development of new strategies and policy and the evidence from the literature that would support this activity. Your focus is a social epidemiological approach: biomedical information should only be used to give context in describing the burden of disease.

This is a formal report and must use appropriate language and referencing. Resources for report writing are available through the Library.

The assessment is an INDIVIDUAL task: you may not work together with your classmates to write the Report.

Assessment 3 will be marked according the following criteria:

• The epidemiological data relevant to the topic are summarised and critiqued: 20%
• Requirements for additional data are outlined and justified: 20%
• The ways social epidemiological data would inform policymakers and practitioners is discussed: 20%
• Insight into any specific issues related to the topic and linkage of these issues to available data is presented and discussed: 20%
• Clear, concise language is used and presentation of argument is linear: 10%
• All work reflects the student's own thinking and words; all information is properly cited, and any direct quotations are identified according to academic conventions: 10%