How can I narrow down my broad thesis proposal topic for my public health master's capstone before the rough draft is due next Friday?

The most practical way to salvage your current literature without starting over is to anchor your existing articles to a specific policy mechanism rather than chasing a broader socioeconomic issue like general broadband access. Since your capstone requires a policy-evaluation component under your department's APA rubric, you can take those twenty articles on rural telehealth disparities and filter them through a single regulatory or funding lens, such as a specific state Medicaid reimbursement rule for virtual care or a federal grant program supporting rural clinic infrastructure. This lets you keep your current sources while immediately shrinking your 5,000-word canvas down to a manageable, highly defensible argument. Juggling a full-time healthcare administration job during your second year of an MPH program means you simply do not have the hours to conduct a sprawling literature review from scratch by next Friday. Instead of looking at overall disparities across entire states or regions, constrain your geographic and demographic parameters tightly. For instance, examine how a particular state-level policy change affected Medicare telehealth waivers for rural elderly populations during a defined timeframe. This sort of targeted framing satisfies the policy-evaluation mandate because it forces you to analyze an explicit legislative or administrative decision, its intended outcomes, and its implementation gaps using the exact evidence you have already gathered. To execute this quickly on your limited evening schedule, spend your next study session sorting your twenty articles into two piles: those that discuss clinical outcomes or access barriers, and those that mention specific reimbursement models, legislative acts, or regulatory frameworks. Drop the papers that only offer general background and double down on the three or four sources that explicitly name policy levers. Draft a new, highly specific research question that asks whether a specific policy actually mitigated a specific barrier in your chosen rural population. Keep in mind that proposed shifts in federal student-loan rules, education policy, or public health funding frameworks can frequently change the administrative landscape of healthcare delivery, though exact caps, implementation dates, and eligibility rules fluctuate frequently based on official guidance. Because policy details evolve rapidly, you should always verify the latest regulatory terms and institutional guidelines directly through StudentAid.gov, the U.S. Department of Education, or your university financial-aid and capstone advisors to ensure your final paper meets all current academic and administrative standards.