HLTH 6005 Week 4 Ethics Analysis Paper Example

"Cuts Health Care Costs by 20%": An Employer's Brochure Request, Evaluation Data That Show Participation and Satisfaction Only, the Code Articles in Play and the Response a Health Education Specialist Can Defend

Student Name

Walden University

HLTH 6005: Introduction to Health and Wellness Education Profession

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

"Cuts Health Care Costs by 20%": An Employer's Brochure Request, Evaluation Data That Show Participation and Satisfaction Only, the Code Articles in Play and the Response a Health Education Specialist Can Defend

The Situation

I am the health education specialist for a composite regional employer, Corliss Manufacturing, which has run a worksite wellness program for 14 months: quarterly biometric screenings, an online health assessment, a walking challenge and lunch-hour sessions on stress and nutrition. The human resources director has asked me to write a one-page brochure for the next open enrollment period and wants its headline to read "Our wellness program cuts health care costs by 20%." The figure comes from a vendor's sales presentation, not from our program. Our own evaluation data show that 41% of employees completed the health assessment, that session satisfaction averaged 4.3 out of 5 and that walking-challenge participants logged more steps during the challenge. We have no claims data, no comparison group and no measure of health care costs. The director says the claim will boost participation and that "every vendor says it."

The Code in Play

Three provisions of the Code of Ethics for the Health Education Profession apply, in the condensed form published by the credentialing commission (National Commission for Health Education Credentialing [NCHEC], n.d.).

Article I sets core expectations, including the principle of honesty. It expects specialists to be truthful about qualifications and to openly communicate to colleagues and employers when they suspect practices that violate the code. In my own words: I may not lend my professional judgment to a claim I know is unsupported, and I should say so to the person asking.

Article II, Section III, sets out responsibility to employers: specialists are responsible for their professional behavior in the workplace and for promoting ethical conduct among colleagues and employers. In my own words: my duty to Corliss includes protecting it from a claim that could damage its credibility with employees.

Article II, Section V, covers research and evaluation: when evaluating programs, specialists abide by professional standards and ethics. In my own words: I should not present our evaluation as showing more than it does.

Article II, Section I, adds responsibility to the public, here the employees who will read the brochure and decide whether to share personal health information with the program on the strength of it.

What the Evidence Would Support

The claim is not merely unproven for our program; the best available evidence suggests programs like ours do not produce it. In a randomized trial of a multicomponent wellness program at 160 worksites of a large U.S. warehouse retailer, Song and Baicker (2019) found that after 18 months employees at intervention sites were more likely to report regular exercise and active weight management, but the program had no significant effects on 10 clinical markers, 38 measures of medical and pharmaceutical spending and use, or absenteeism, job tenure and performance. A separate randomized study of a university workplace wellness program found similar null effects on medical spending in its first years (Jones et al., 2019).

What our data would support is narrower: participation levels, satisfaction and short-term changes in activity among volunteers.

Options and Their Consequences

Option 1: Write the Brochure as Requested

For employees: they would be told something untrue and might enroll, or share health information, on false grounds. For the employer: a claim that cannot be backed exposes Corliss to employee distrust if challenged, and possibly to complaints. For me: it would violate the honesty principle and the evaluation standard, and lending my name to it would put my credential at risk.

Option 2: Refuse and Write Nothing

For employees: they lose an accurate description of a program that does offer them something. For the employer: it gets no brochure and may hire someone else to write the claim. For me: my integrity is intact, but I have abandoned my responsibility to help the employer communicate well and have not addressed the underlying practice.

Option 3: Decline the Claim, Offer an Accurate Alternative and Explain Why

For employees: they get a brochure that describes what the program offers and what participants have reported. For the employer: it gets a usable brochure, plus a clear explanation of the risk in the vendor figure and the evidence behind that concern. For me: I meet my duties of honesty, of ethical conduct with my employer and of accurate reporting, and I keep a working relationship.

The Response I Would Take

I would take Option 3. I would meet the director, explain that I cannot write the 20% claim because our data do not measure costs and the strongest trials of similar programs found no cost savings, and offer a draft headline that is both true and appealing: "Join the 4 in 10 of your coworkers who have taken the health assessment, and see what the walking challenge can do for you." I would show the director the trial results in a few sentences, not as a lecture but as protection for Corliss. I would also propose adding a modest cost evaluation to next year's plan, using claims data with appropriate privacy safeguards, so that any future claim can rest on our own evidence.

If the director insisted on the original headline, Article I's expectation that specialists communicate concerns about unethical practices would require me to put my objection in writing and decline to have my name or title on the brochure.

What Makes This Response Workable

The chosen response works only if the director sees it as help rather than obstruction. For that reason the conversation should open with the shared goal, more employees using the program, and treat the evidence as a risk to the company rather than a correction of the director. Offering a finished alternative headline in the same meeting matters as much as the objection itself.

Limits of the Analysis

The employer is composite, and its evaluation data are illustrative. The trials cited studied specific programs at particular employers over one to two years, so they do not prove that no wellness program saves money; they show that the claim cannot be assumed. The analysis also applies the condensed version of the code, which a specialist would check against the full text before acting.

References

Jones, D., Molitor, D., & Reif, J. (2019). What do workplace wellness programs do? Evidence from the Illinois Workplace Wellness Study. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(4), 1747-1791. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjz023

National Commission for Health Education Credentialing. (n.d.). Code of ethics. Retrieved October 7, 2026, from https://www.nchec.org/code-of-ethics

Song, Z., & Baicker, K. (2019). Effect of a workplace wellness program on employee health and economic outcomes: A randomized clinical trial. JAMA, 321(15), 1491-1501. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2019.3307