An Evaluation of Policy Effectiveness-credibility and Public Trust Issues Affecting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

The proposed policy solution addresses the credibility and public trust issues affecting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It seeks to establish an independent CDC free from Executive control. The policy change will give Congress the power to select and vet the CDC leadership, determine the tenure, and fire the leadership in case it engages in issues that affect the credibility and public trust of the CDC.

I will employ the CDC Framework for Evaluation in Public Health in the evaluation process. The CDC Framework for Evaluation is based on set standards for policy utility, policy feasibility, policy propriety, and policy accuracy (Centers for Disease Control, n.d.). For a policy with specific objectives, it is possible to evaluate the impact of the proposed solutions on a number of identified variables of interest and how the policy impacts such variables (Mergoni & de Witte, 2022). I will focus on the parties of interest and if the policy and the practicality of the implementation of the policy solution based on available resources address their issues. Additionally, I will evaluate if there are any ethical concerns and biases in the proposed policy solution, as well as the accuracy of the policy development and implementation, including the alignment of the policy solution to the issues it seeks to address.

The evaluation process will include both formative and summative evaluation. Summative evaluations consider to what level a policy program can achieve its objectives, while formative evaluations focus on the implementation processes and strategies (Kaczmarek & Romaniuk, 2020). An example of a summative evaluation of the proposed CDC policy solution will include a simulation of the policy within the CDC’s operation to determine whether it will be impactful as expected. On the other hand, a formative evaluation will include conducting interviews with the major stakeholders to obtain their views on the policy solution and the implementation process.

References

Centers for Disease Control. (n.d.). Brief 1: Overview of Policy Evaluation. Retrieved December 16, 2022, from http://www.cdc.gov/