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Issue Brief Structure & Templates

The PolicyOptions Issue Briefs seek to answer four fundamental questions related to a public policy issue:

• What is the nature & extent of the problem?
• What’s been tried in the past to address it?
• What’s being done now?
• What are the distinctly different approaches to addressing this issue?

Answers to these questions are contained in the following outline for the PolicyOptions issue brief template:

• Goal Statement
• Scope of the Problem 
• Past Policy and Program Milestones
• Current Policy and Programs
• Policy Options and Model Programs
• Key Organizations/Individuals 
• Glossary of Terms 
• Bibliography   

Each issue brief should have an overview page, local/state/national information pages, and policy option/model program pages.  We use three distinct template pages to piece together the content for the issue briefs:

• Issue Brief Overview:  This page is the "home page" for issue briefs on a specific topic.  It contains the following sections:

• goal statement — one sentence that further defines the topic

• links to policy options or model program profiles  — see below
• links to the geographically-focused information — see below
• glossary of terms — key words or phrases that the layperson needs to know to understand this issue

• Local/State/National Issue Information:  These page(s) contain the geographically-focused content on the issue for the following sections:
• scope of the problem — factual statements on the extent of the problem in the past, current, or future
• past policy — key legislation and milestones including significant policy and funding shifts, major studies, etc.
• current policy — summary of current policies in the form of legislation, programs, and funding
• key organizations/individuals — contacts for public and private organizations and key individuals
• bibliography — web sites, reports, articles, and other reference material

• Policy Options and Model Programs:  These page(s) profile each policy option or model program listed on the issue overview page.  The content in these profile pages are as follows:

• Summary — one paragraph description 

• Goal — short description of the policy or program goal  
• Cost — total policy or program cost; also include per person cost if available 
• Implementation — describe how the policy or program is implemented (esp. who, how) 
• Evaluation — summarize any evaluation findings that policy or program effectiveness
• Status — indicate whether this policy or program has been adopted in more locations or remains a proposal 
• Point of View — quotations from those in support or opposition to this policy or program 
• Contact — contact information for sponsor of this policy or program 
• Bibliography    link to any additional readings or websites related to this policy or program 

This approach allows the researchers to eliminate the need to repeat the goal statement, glossary of terms, and policy option or model programs in each of the geographically-focused issue brief pages.  This is illustrated in the following graphic which shows how these sections are common to issue briefs on this topic whether they are focused on the local, state, national or global level:

However, when the user is ready to prepare a printable-versions of an issue brief they will use either a Microsoft Word or Powerpoint template we will be developing, into which they will copy the content from the issue overview page and the content from the geographically-focused issue brief page into a unified presentation.

See How to Use This Wiki for directions on creating new wiki pages using the built-in templates described in this section.  Below is a graphic illustration of how the pages fit together: