User:Anna Marshall/sandbox

Article 1: Rural Health
Everything seems to be related to the article but one thing that was bothersome is that almost half the article is on telemedicine. the telemedicine section of this article has almost the exact same section heads as the full article on telemedicine. They link to the telemedicine article where you have a large repeat of information. I think this article could be improved by deleting most of the information of telemedicine and leaving the link to the full telemedicine article so you can read more about it there if you are interested. Seems wasteful to have such a large repeat of information. By removing a lot of the telemedicine portion you could open up room for more information to be added about rural health. There are other projects and strategies that telemedicine and i think that the article is shorted by not discussing those. Also after reading this articles information on telemedicine and the actual telemedicine article i feel that the short section on telemedicine as one of the methods of improving rural health and the provided link to the full article is sufficient to inform people. The article is heavily weighted toward the telemedicine section and there for i think that viewpoint is being overrepresented.

Most of the citations seemed to be working but I found at least one that lead to a page not found site. This citation should be removed. The sources that do work seem to be from good reliable places and are not biased.

I think there needs to be more added on different methods of improving rural health. For example in the Efforts to increase rural health section there is one paragraph about rural health projects world wide and then the rest of the section is on telemedicine. There are more projects and efforts that should be elaborated on.

The talk pages seems to echo my feelings about the article, that there needs to be more information about different kinds of health improvement projects that are going on. One person even gave a nice example about a project in Canada. But all these comments are from 2010 or earlier so there hasn't been any recent talk about how to fix the article which is unfortunate.

Article 2: Peace corps Initiatives section
The peace corps article is long and well written so I just wanted to evaluate a shorter section that has to do with my particular research.

The initiatives section seems fairly short given that it is a large part of the peace corps work. i think that they need to add a little bit on the general peace corps initiatives and not just a few specific example. Also some more recent examples would be nice. This article as a whole has a large amount of good references which made me realize the difference in citation from the first article I evaluated. Everything in this section is relevant and well cited. Things are explained well and reads well. The biggest issue is the brevity. On the talk page there is a lot of discussion on different things people felt were missing from the article as a whole and recent updates in peacecorp activity that need to be added to the article. The talk page contained information on out of date material and it seems that the article editors have done a good job of keeping up with removing things that are no longer correct.

The initiatives section of the article isn't biased and doesn't lean heavily on any one topic.

The peacecorp wikipedia article is part of two projects, united states/government and Barack Obama

Adding to an article
Rural Health

added:

"In rural India, an evaluation of a community organizing, mother and infant health program called the sure start project showed that community organization around maternal and infant health improvement lead to actual improvement in the health of the mother. The evaluation also showed that these community based programs lead to increased use of health services by the mothers. "

Deleted:

I removed a citation that was no longer working.

Peace corps

Fixed:

I fixed a link for which the page no longer existed by swapping it with the current existing page link

Rural Health sources

 * 1. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/185444
 * A review on my PEs book "Where There is No Doctor" and how it is helping rural communities. This review talks bout the need to have different forms of help n rural developing communities where simply increasing the number of doctors and nurses is not feasible.
 * 2. http://www.nzdl.org/gsdlmod?e=d-00000-00---off-0ccgi--00-00-10-0---0---0direct-10---4---0-0l--11-en-50---20-help---00-0-1-00-0-0-11-1-0utfZz-8-00&a=d&cl=CL3.7&d=HASH01513df44c40302e679640a1.3.3
 * This article looked at the problems with health care centers in developing countries and some of the programs that have been initiated to fix these problems. The article discusses what makes a program work and what problems the centers in developing countries are facing.
 * 3. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7857357/#full-text-section
 * This article talks about the development, application and outcomes of the use of a mobile health app in sierra leone. The App offers remote users to use an "informal disability screening". The app also offers various learning sources on disabilities, providing general education and awareness. Apps like these are part of a newer method to reach rural communities on a modern front. By using the cellphone, which many have more access to than a doctor or clinic, health education and help although in a rudimentary framework become accessible to these communities. The app has an easy to use interface with simple step by step help and educational systems on many of the most common disabilities. This allows almost anyone to be able to use the app and access the information efficiently and with a fuller understanding.
 * The apps first field tests were positive when dealing with the interface itself but as to be expected when it comes to mobile apps actually accessing the app was difficult because of lack of cellphone service in these areas. So this answer to rural health improvement is a good one but if the app cant be reached without cellphone service it is useless in many rural places.
 * 4. https://academic.oup.com/fampra/article/20/4/457/625248
 * This article pointed out the common problems faced by rural areas when it comes to health care even between developed and developing countries . These include, communication, supply delivery, and personnel shortage.
 * these problems are exasperated in areas that are in developing countries where even in urban areas you have similar problems.
 * http://www.ncsl.org/documents/health/RuralHealth_PolicyOptions_1113.pdf

Summarizing and Synthesizing
I am trying to look at sources that review different kinds of rural health initiatives so I can add more to the rural health projects world wide section of the rural health article. Some thing that I noticed and want to write more on are the use of non traditional methods of education and informal health advice where its not possible at the moment to build a clinic or bring in a doctor. Things like mobile apps and laymen texts look like they could be a good midway solution to a tough problem.

Peace Corps sources

 * 1. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214109X15700641
 * Project between the peace corps and Seed Global Health to bring much needed doctors and nurses to areas where the peace corps volunteers work. Although the program only had about 30 doctors its still an improvement to these communities who need them
 * 2. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/205590
 * Talks about the need for a "peace corps" for HIV/aids in middle to low income countries where the problem is biggest. Article addresses how a force like the volnteer force of the peace corps could be used to help start a more involved awareness campaign to combat HIV
 * 3.http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/HE-11-2013-0055
 * article looks at "health promoting schools". Article talks about the "benefits" found among the communities where these schools were put in place. These schools helped educate the surrounding communities and increased preventative care.
 * 4. http://globalwater.org/get-involved/peace-corps-collaboration/
 * 5. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24826860
 * 6. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/773798_4

Summarizing and Synthesizing
I need to find a different article to add to. There are few scholarly sources on health impact of peace corps projects. Maybe i could look into sources that talk about the WHO health impact projects.

Rural Health
Rural health improvement projects world wide tend to focus on finding solutions to the three basic problems associated with a rural health system. These problems are communication, transportation of services and goods, and lack of doctors, nurses and general staff.

Many rural health projects in poor areas that lack access to basic medical help like clinics or doctors use non traditional methods for providing health care. Approaches like Hesperian Health Guides book, Where There is No Doctor and World Hope International's app, mBody Health, have been shown to increase health awareness and provide additional health resources to rural communities.

An evaluation of a community organizing, mother and infant health program called the Sure Start project in rural India showed that community organization around maternal and infant health improvement lead to actual improvement in the health of the mother. The evaluation also showed that these community based programs lead to increased use of health services by the mothers.

WHO section
The WHO has done many studies on rural health statistics including for example, showing that urban heath centers score significantly higher in service readiness than rural health centers, and the population of health workers across India where on can see the comparative amounts of workers in urban vs rural areas. Research studies like these exemplify the major problems needing attention in rural health systems and help lead to more impactful improvement projects.

The WHO also works on evaluation health system improvements and proposing better health system improvements. An article published in March 2017 highlighted the large improvement to be made in the Solomon Islands health system in a plain laid out by the Ministry of Health and Medical Services, supported by the WHO. These large scale changes move to bring health services need by the rural population "closer to home".

Peace Corps
A project to use the Peace Corps numbers and the nurses and doctors from Seed Global Health brought around 30 new doctors to areas in need. This collaboration helped these areas fill their clinics with more doctors and nurses and clinic efficiency and reach improved.

New Idea

Collaborative Projects --- new heading in article under "initiatives"
Global Health Services partnership described above brought those 30 doctors to schools in need in Uganda, Tanzania, and Malawi.