Peer Review / Term : “Health Equity” Definition

Peer Review / Term: “Health Equity” Definition

Thank you for defining an interesting term and concept with the students of ENGL 301 Technical Writing UBC. This is a wonderful definition of the term “health equity” to a non-technical audience who may be unfamiliar with the concept and its context in healthcare. Please see the review of the document below with some suggestions for improvement.

First Impression: This is a very straightforward definition that meets all the assignment requirements: definition is structured, it includes visual aids, and it includes a list of references.

Organization:

• The organization of the definition is well structured out.
• The selection methods of expansion through history, operating principle, required conditions, and negation fit well and help to properly define the term.
• Great work on your definition of health equity.
• Visuals and figures used must be properly cited with correct placement, please review the textbook for further notes.

Language/Expression:

• In the parenthetical definition your tone is informative and professional, however it would help to use more colloquial terms to explain the term to a non-technical audience.
• Your introduction provides context about the outline of the definition and explains the importance of the term.
• In terms of the sentence definition, it may be confusing when referring to “social determinant”.
  • To a non-technical reader, the concept of a determinant may not be very straight-forward or clear.
• Despite the slightly esoteric terminology, both the parenthetical and sentence definitions encapsulate a good explanation of the concept “health equity”.

Content:

• The assignment meets the needed requirements, which include the following:
  • relatively complex term within discipline
  • definition directed to “non-technical readers” with purpose
  • composes the forms of definition
  • contains four types of expansion methods
  • contains visuals
  • supplemented by at least three references

Visuals:

• Please make sure visuals are properly labelled and cited.
• It may be helpful to include a brief reference stating where the visuals are from and provide visuals that do not include too much text, in order to enhance the quality of the text you’ve provided.

Clarity:

• There were a couple of occasions where more specific terms could have been explained a bit more thoroughly to provide a clearer definition on health equity.
  • For example, in the operating principles section of the expanded definition, it was difficult to fully understand how analyzing social concepts through variables could provide a clearer picture of the “social determinants” of health.
• Your explanation of negation and why health equity is important today is quite vague and doesn’t provide specific case examples of the current problems surrounding health equity or in what context might the audience relate to the term.
  • For example, you provide a good understanding of health equity when you mention that individuals who don’t have access to “fitness centres, medical facilities or community centres” have lower health equity, but you do not specify an example of how it might be a disadvantage of “accessibility and convenience”.
• Being descriptive in your examples allows readers to clearly distinguish what it entails exactly.

Highlights/Weaknesses:

• The history portion in your expanded definition was very informative and interesting.
• Your mix of active voice and passive voice worked quite well in the overall context of your term, since you provide a clear and direct explanation of the term while be cognizant of the fact that health equity varies for different demographics and specific individuals.
• The required conditions component could have gone deeper in explaining how assessment health equity requires a “myriad of variables” and what an “individual’s vitality” entails, specifically to different demographics of people.
• Some portions of the assignment were repetitive. For example, the “required components” were informative, but they repeated the same information provided in your operating principles, such as the concept of variables determining  health equity.

Works Cited List:

• Your use of references were clear and informative, but it often times included full authors’ names which made the text longer than it should be. As a result, this distracts the reader from your textual analysis by overwhelming them with in-text citations.
• Overall, your references showed your thorough research of the concept of health equity.

Purpose/Audience:

• The definition has been described for the intended non-technical audience.
• It clearly describes the concepts needed to understand the concept of health equity.

Concluding Comments:

This definition was a very informative read, well organized and properly executed. The following edits should edits would make this wonderful definition.

• Further details on examples and descriptions
• Language use
• Reviewing Works Cited list and decreasing in-text citations.

Thank you for this wonderful definition. The written definition of health equity is on track to success, and clearly illustrates the ability to define technical terms in the ENGL 301 Technical Writing Course. Please do not hesitate to ask any questions.

Best,

Danisa Rambing