PUBH 8410 Week 2 Systems Map Example

Course	PUBH 8410 Fundamentals of Leadership, System Evaluation, and Interventions in Public Health
Week	Week 2
Paper type	Systems map paper
Length	About 690 words, 5 pages
Format	APA 7 student paper
School	Walden University
Program	PhD in Public Health
Updated	October 2026

Free sample paper for PUBH 8410 Week 2

Why the Waiting List Grows Faster Than Anyone Can Work It: A Systems Map of Untreated Opioid Use Disorder in Pregnancy and Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal in a Composite County

Student Name

Walden University

PUBH 8410: Fundamentals of Leadership, System Evaluation, and Interventions in Public Health

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

What this page is doingThe title names the behavior the map has to explain, a backlog that outruns effort, rather than the agencies involved.

Why the Waiting List Grows Faster Than Anyone Can Work It: A Systems Map of Untreated Opioid Use Disorder in Pregnancy and Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal in a Composite County

The Stock at the Center

Ridgeline County, a composite county, records a rising count of infants withdrawing from opioids at birth even as its hospitals, jail and clinics report working harder. A systems map explains that combination better than an organizational chart. Behavior over time comes from the structure of stocks, flows and feedback, not from the effort of any single part (Sterman, 2000). The central stock here is the number of pregnant residents with opioid use disorder who are not receiving medication treatment. New pregnancies among people with the disorder fill it. Treatment starts drain it, and so do births, which move the problem into the nursery.

A second stock holds pregnant residents in treatment. Its outflow is dropout, and the county's case reviews point to one dropout route above others: arrest, when the jail stops medication at intake.

What this page is doingStarting with one stock makes the rise a question of inflow against outflow, not of how hard anyone works.

Two Reinforcing Loops

The waiting-list loop deserves the closest reading. When referrals rise, each one waits longer, some people give up, and some return in crisis to an emergency department that refers them again. Success at identifying people creates the workload that limits further success, the pattern Senge (2006) called limits to growth. Pushing harder on identification without adding intake capacity would strengthen this loop.

Table 1

Feedback loops in the Ridgeline map

Loop	Type	Path	What it does alone \|
R1 jail churn	Reinforcing	untreated disorder, arrest, medication stopped at intake, return to use after release, rearrest	Keeps moving people from the treated stock back to the untreated one \|
R2 waiting list	Reinforcing	more referrals, longer wait for an intake slot, more people lost before a first dose, more crises, more referrals	Lets the backlog grow faster than programs can work it \|
B1 emergency start	Balancing	untreated disorder, emergency visit, buprenorphine started on the spot, fewer untreated	Drains the stock, but only where emergency departments act \|
B2 nursery signal	Balancing	more infants withdrawing, longer nursery stays, hospital pressure on prenatal screening, more people identified	Corrects the system slowly, after harm has occurred \|

Loop names are the author's; the paths draw on the county's composite case reviews.

Two Balancing Loops

The emergency start loop is the strongest correction available. Emergency patients given a first buprenorphine dose before leaving were far more likely to be engaged in treatment a month later than those handed a referral (D'Onofrio et al., 2015). The nursery loop also balances, but it only acts after infants are already withdrawing. National data show how far that signal lagged the problem: maternal opioid-related diagnoses more than doubled between 2010 and 2017 (Hirai et al., 2021).

Three Delays

Delays are drawn with the conventional pair of hash marks, because a map without them predicts an instant correction that never comes (Sterman, 2000). The first sits on the waiting list itself, measured in weeks. The second lies between a positive toxicology result and anyone who could act on it, since results often reach a chart rather than a person. The third is gestation: months separate an untreated pregnancy from the infant's diagnosis, so the county sees today's nursery cases as evidence about last year's system.

Boundary Table

The boundary matters because the inside items are where a county leader can act. Read together, the loops suggest the county's problem is not a shortage of effort but a structure in which identification outpaces treatment capacity and the jail undoes treatment that others start.

Table 2

What the map treats as inside and outside

Force	Inside or outside	Reason \|
Illicit drug supply	Outside	No county agency can change it within a planning cycle \|
Medicaid coverage rules	Outside	Set by the state, though they shape intake capacity \|
Jail medication policy	Inside	The county contracts the jail's medical provider \|
Emergency department practice	Inside	Two local hospitals set their own protocols \|
Child welfare reporting	Partly inside	State law governs reporting, but local practice affects whether patients disclose \|

Placing a force outside is a scoping choice, not a claim that it does not matter.

References

D'Onofrio, G., O'Connor, P. G., Pantalon, M. V., Chawarski, M. C., Busch, S. H., Owens, P. H., Bernstein, S. L., & Fiellin, D. A. (2015). Emergency department-initiated buprenorphine/naloxone treatment for opioid dependence: A randomized clinical trial. JAMA, 313(16), 1636-1644. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2015.3474

Hirai, A. H., Ko, J. Y., Owens, P. L., Stocks, C., & Patrick, S. W. (2021). Neonatal abstinence syndrome and maternal opioid-related diagnoses in the US, 2010-2017. JAMA, 325(2), 146-155. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.24991

Senge, P. M. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization (Rev. ed.). Doubleday.

Sterman, J. D. (2000). Business dynamics: Systems thinking and modeling for a complex world. Irwin/McGraw-Hill.

The Walden PUBH 8410 Week 2 instructions

Systems map assignments usually ask students to draw a public health problem as a causal loop or stock-and-flow diagram and explain it in a short paper. Prompts often require at least one reinforcing and one balancing loop, polarity marks on each link, delays where they matter and a statement of the map's boundary. Students are typically expected to draw on system dynamics sources and to explain what the diagram predicts the system will do over time. The narrative matters as much as the drawing; instructors want each loop read aloud in plain language. Maps that list agencies and arrows between them, rather than quantities that rise and fall, tend to be marked down because they show responsibility instead of behavior.

Inside the PUBH 8410 Week 2 example

The paper begins with a single stock and its flows, which makes the county's rise a question of inflow outpacing outflow rather than of effort. A second stock of pregnancies in treatment introduces dropout through arrest. A table then sets out four loops by name, type, path and what each would do alone. The waiting-list loop receives the longest reading and is linked to the limits-to-growth archetype, since identifying more people creates the backlog that slows treatment. The balancing loops are supported with trial evidence and national hospital data. Each of the three delays gets its own short argument. A boundary table closes the paper and explains why drug supply and state coverage rules stay outside.

Where the marks sit in the PUBH 8410 Week 2 rubric

Graders typically assess whether the map is technically sound, whether the narrative explains each loop correctly and whether the analysis draws a useful conclusion. Technical soundness covers labeled stocks, correct polarities, clearly marked delays and loops identified as reinforcing or balancing. Strong papers say what each loop would produce if it acted alone, then explain how the loops interact. Naming a recognized archetype, used accurately, shows command of the literature. A stated boundary earns credit because it shows the author chose what to leave out. Variables named as quantities, such as the number of untreated pregnancies, score better than vague labels like awareness or the system, which cannot rise or fall in any measurable way.

PUBH 8410 Week 2 help: mistakes that cost marks

Start with one stock and ask what fills it and what drains it; most useful maps grow from that question. Name every variable as something that can increase or decrease. Read each loop aloud as a sentence before drawing it, and mark a delay wherever a change takes weeks or months to show. When the map gets crowded, move some forces to a boundary table rather than deleting them. Test the map by asking whether it explains the trend that worried you. If your loops are not closing or your narrative keeps drifting into agency descriptions, send us your draft diagram and topic, and we can produce a sample map and paper built around your problem.

Get a PUBH 8410 Week 2 example written to your instructions

Name the problem and the setting the map must cover, then attach the Week 2 prompt and rubric; the causal loop diagram, stock-and-flow sketch and narrative arrive within 24 to 48 hours, the first one free, with diagrams in an editable format. Instructors who ask for a rich picture or a different notation receive that instead.

More PUBH 8410 papers and PhD in Public Health samples

PUBH 8410 Week 2 questions, answered

Where can I find a free PUBH 8410 Week 2 sample paper?

The whole Week 2 systems map paper is reproduced above, covering untreated opioid use disorder in pregnancy in a composite county.

What is the central stock in this map?

Pregnant residents with opioid use disorder who are not receiving medication, filled by new pregnancies and drained by treatment starts and births.

Which loop limits the county's progress?

The waiting-list loop, where more referrals lengthen waits, people give up, and crises bring them back as new referrals.

Why are delays drawn on the map?

Without them the map would predict instant correction; here weeks of waiting, lost test results and months of gestation slow every response.

What does the boundary table do?

It states which forces, such as drug supply and state coverage rules, are treated as outside the county's control and why.