| Course | HLTH 8136 Leadership, Professionalism, and Ethics in Public Health Practice |
|---|---|
| Week | Week 3 |
| Paper type | Duty analysis |
| Length | About 1,270 words, 7 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Walden University |
| Program | PhD in Public Health |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for HLTH 8136 Week 3
Hallway Greetings Logged as Outreach Contacts: A Duty Analysis That Sorts Each Obligation by the Party It Binds, the Data Coordinator, the Manager, the Agency and the Profession
Student Name
Walden University
HLTH 8136: Leadership, Professionalism, and Ethics in Public Health Practice
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Hallway Greetings Logged as Outreach Contacts: A Duty Analysis That Sorts Each Obligation by the Party It Binds, the Data Coordinator, the Manager, the Agency and the Profession
The Case
A community health promotion program, invented for this analysis, offers blood pressure checks and diabetes education in apartment buildings for older adults. Its grant comes from a regional foundation, also invented, that pays the program partly according to the number of outreach contacts it reports each quarter. The grant defines a contact as a conversation of at least ten minutes in which a staff member gives health information and records the resident's needs. Halfway through the year, the program is behind its contact target. The program manager tells staff to log brief exchanges in building hallways, greetings and two-minute conversations about upcoming events, as full contacts. The data coordinator, who compiles the quarterly report, notices that contact numbers have doubled while hours worked have not, and asks what changed.
The question for this analysis is not only whether the practice is wrong. It is who owes what, because several parties are involved and each is bound by different obligations.
The Matrix
Table 1
Obligations in the Case, Their Sources, the Party Bound and Whether It Is Being Met
| Obligation | Source | Party bound | Being met? | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Report data accurately, including when the numbers disappoint | Principles of Ethical Practice; APHA code value of professionalism and trust | Data coordinator | Not yet: the coordinator has noticed but not acted | |
| Avoid directing staff to misrepresent their work | Principles of Ethical Practice; duty of fidelity to staff | Manager | No | |
| Report honestly to the funder | Grant terms; duty of fidelity to the funder | Manager and agency | No | |
| Design incentives and oversight that do not reward inflation | Principle of building public trust through collaborations | Agency | Partly: no review of sudden changes in counts | |
| Protect the credibility of public health data | APHA code value of professionalism and trust | Profession | At risk if the report is filed as is | |
A party can be bound by more than one row; the table separates obligations so that each can be assessed on its own.
The Data Coordinator
The coordinator's duty is to report accurately. The public health ethics principles published in 2002 ask agencies to gather the facts that effective programs require and to pass on to communities what those communities need to decide well (Thomas et al., 2002). A contact count that includes greetings tells the funder, and through it the community, that the program is reaching more residents in depth than it is. Ross (1930) listed fidelity, keeping promises and not deceiving, among the prima facie duties, those that bind unless a stronger duty outweighs them. Nothing in this case outweighs the coordinator's duty not to file a report the coordinator knows to be misleading. The coordinator has met the first part of that duty by asking. The rest requires putting the concern in writing to the manager and, if the practice continues, to the agency's leadership before the report is submitted.
The Manager
The manager is bound by two obligations that run in different directions. The first runs to the funder: the grant defines a contact, and the manager agreed to report against that definition. The second runs to staff. A manager who instructs staff to log greetings as contacts asks them to take part in misrepresentation and exposes them to blame if the practice is discovered. The manager may feel that missing the target would cost the program money and staff their jobs, which is a real concern. But Ross's framework treats such consequences as a reason to weigh duties, not as permission to deceive. The honest route is open: report the shortfall, explain it and ask the funder to revise the target or the timeline. The manager is failing both obligations.
The Agency
It is tempting to stop at the manager, but the agency is also bound. An agency that accepts a grant paying by contact count, and that does not review sudden changes in reported numbers, has built an incentive to inflate and removed the check that would catch it. Thompson (1980) described the problem of many hands, in which many people contribute to an outcome in an organization and responsibility becomes hard to assign to any one of them. His answer was not to excuse the organization but to recognize that an institution answers for arrangements under which misconduct becomes predictable. This analysis applies that point: the agency shares responsibility for the inflation because its incentives and oversight allowed it. Its obligation is to review the quarter's data before submission and to negotiate grant terms that pay for depth of outreach and not only for its count.
The Profession
The profession's obligation is the most diffuse. The APHA code names professionalism and trust among the field's core values (American Public Health Association, 2019). Foundations, legislatures and the public rely on program data to decide what to fund. If inflated contact counts become routine, every program's reports are discounted, including those that are accurate. The profession meets this obligation through its members' conduct and through norms that make honest reporting of shortfalls normal rather than risky.
The Residents Behind the Numbers
One party appears in no row of the matrix because it holds no duty here, yet it carries the cost. The older adults in these buildings are the reason the program exists. When greetings are counted as education sessions, the program's reports suggest that residents' needs have been recorded and addressed when most have not. If the foundation renews the grant on those figures, it may fund a program that looks successful while residents with uncontrolled blood pressure go unseen. The Principles ask public health to work for community members with the least power (Thomas et al., 2002), and residents of subsidized senior housing rarely read grant reports. Accurate counts are how their unmet needs become visible to the people who decide what to fund.
Why This Is Not a Gray Area
Some ethical cases in this course involve real disagreement about which duty should prevail. This one does not, once the facts are fixed. The grant's definition is written, the hallway exchanges do not meet it, and the manager's instruction was given to raise the count, not to clarify a rule. What makes the case useful is not its difficulty but its ordinariness: the pressure was a missed target, the act was small and repeated, and every person involved could tell a story in which they were protecting jobs or the program. The duty analysis cuts through those stories by asking each party, separately, what it owes.
What Each Party Should Do Now
The coordinator should document the change in counts, raise it with the manager in writing and, if the instruction stands, take it to the agency's leadership before the report goes out. The manager should withdraw the instruction, correct the quarter's count and explain the shortfall to the funder. The agency should review the data, support the correction and discuss revised grant terms with the foundation. Each action belongs to a different party, and none of them depends on the others acting first.
Limits
This analysis assumes the facts as stated: that the grant defines a contact clearly and that the hallway exchanges do not meet it. If the definition were ambiguous, the manager's instruction might be a reasonable interpretation, and the coordinator's duty would be to seek clarification rather than to object. The analysis also does not address what the funder owes, which would include setting targets that reward depth of outreach rather than volume alone.
References
American Public Health Association. (2019). Public health code of ethics.
Ross, W. D. (1930). The right and the good. Clarendon Press.
Thomas, J. C., Sage, M., Dillenberg, J., & Guillory, V. J. (2002). A code of ethics for public health. American Journal of Public Health, 92(7), 1057-1059. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.92.7.1057
Thompson, D. F. (1980). Moral responsibility of public officials: The problem of many hands. American Political Science Review, 74(4), 905-916. https://doi.org/10.2307/1954312
What the HLTH 8136 Week 3 instructions ask for
In Week 3 students analyze a case by identifying each relevant obligation, its source and the party it binds. The analysis should treat individuals and institutions separately, since an agency can bear obligations distinct from those of its staff. Faculty expect each obligation to be grounded in a code, principle or ethical framework from the readings, and the analysis to say whether each party is meeting its duty. A matrix or table near the front is common. The paper should end with what each party should do. Five or six pages in APA format is typical. A closing limits section should say which facts the conclusions depend on.
How the HLTH 8136 Week 3 example is put together
The case section sets out the grant's definition of a contact, the shortfall, the manager's instruction and the coordinator's question. Table 1 lists five obligations with sources, parties and whether each is met. The coordinator section cites the Principles on accurate information and Ross on fidelity, and lays out the steps the coordinator owes. The manager section describes duties to the funder and to staff and the honest alternative of reporting the shortfall. The agency section applies Thompson on many hands to argue that incentives and missing oversight share the blame. The profession section cites the APHA code on trust. New sections describe the residents who bear the cost and explain why the case is not a gray area once its facts are fixed. Closing sections list each party's actions and the limits of the analysis.
Where the marks sit in the HLTH 8136 Week 3 rubric
Duty analyses are graded on whether obligations are sorted correctly by party. A paper that blames the manager alone, or treats the case as a single wrong, misses the assignment's main move. The rubric rewards sources for each obligation, accurate use of Ross's prima facie duties and an argued case for institutional responsibility. Faculty look for a matrix that the discussion actually follows, row by row. Actions for each party should be specific and should not depend on others acting first. Noting who bears the cost, even when that group holds no duty, shows depth. Limits that state which facts the conclusions depend on are credited. Exact citations and a readable matrix earn what is left.
HLTH 8136 Week 3 help: mistakes that cost marks
Students often write this paper as a narrative of wrongdoing focused on one person. That approach misses the agency's role and the profession's stake. Another common problem is citing a code in general terms without linking a specific principle to a specific party. Some papers also stop at judgment and never say what anyone should do. To strengthen yours, build the matrix first and decide, for each obligation, which party it binds and where it comes from. Give each party its own section. Argue, with a source, whether the institution shares responsibility. End with concrete steps. A duty analysis of another case from your course, set out the same way, can be drafted for you as a model.
Get a HLTH 8136 Week 3 example written to your instructions
Send the Week 3 prompt, the rubric and whatever scenario or reading list came with it; a duty analysis sorted by the party each obligation binds returns in 24 to 48 hours at no charge the first time. Required matrices, page limits or a particular ethical framework are built in from the instructions you forward.
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HLTH 8136 Week 3 questions, answered
Why sort obligations by who they bind?
Because the same scenario looks different depending on whose duty is in question. A data coordinator, a manager and an agency each owe something about accurate reporting, though the content of each differs, and a remedy aimed at the wrong party fails. Sorting by party lets your analysis assign responsibility precisely and recommend a correction that reaches the actual cause.
What does Ross add to a duty analysis?
Ross separated prima facie duties, which bind unless outweighed by a stronger duty in the circumstances, from actual duties, which are what one must do all things considered. That lets you explain how a practitioner might justifiably set one obligation aside while still owing something because of it, such as disclosure or repair. It fits cases where duties genuinely conflict.
Can an organization have ethical obligations?
Most public health ethics writing assumes so, and the twelve ethical practice principles for the field are addressed largely to institutions. Your paper can treat the agency as a bearer of duties while noting the philosophical debate. The grade rests more on showing how the agency's structure shaped individual choices, which is where institutional duties become concrete.
Where can I find a free HLTH 8136 Week 3 sample paper?
The complete Week 3 duty analysis is on this page, sorting the obligations in an inflated outreach count case among the data coordinator, manager, agency and profession, with a matrix and four references.
Why does the analysis hold the agency responsible?
Because the agency accepted a grant that pays by contact count and did not review sudden changes in reported numbers, creating an incentive to inflate and removing the check that would catch it, a point drawn from Thompson's problem of many hands.