| Course | HD599 Master's Capstone in Health Education and Promotion |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 2 |
| Paper type | Capstone proposal |
| Length | About 1,110 words, 7 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | MS in Health Education |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for HD599 Unit 2
Fifty-Eight Volunteers, Three Stations, One Gap: A Unit 2 Capstone Proposal for Post-Fire Exposure Reduction in a Volunteer Fire District
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
HD599: Master's Capstone in Health Education and Promotion
Unit 2 Capstone Proposal
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Kessling Valley Fire Protection District, its stations, members and figures are composite; the cancer classification, decontamination study and competency framework cited are real.
Problem Statement
After fires, Kessling Valley's volunteer firefighters rarely decontaminate their gear and skin on scene, and they carry contaminated gear home in their own vehicles. Over the six months before this proposal, officers' exposure forms recorded gross decontamination in only 19 out of 141 member exposures (13 percent). The form has no field for how gear travels home, so the second part of the problem is known only from observation, such as the January fire at which at least seven of twelve members carried unbagged gear to personal vehicles.
The problem matters because occupational exposure as a firefighter is now classified as carcinogenic to humans (International Agency for Research on Cancer [IARC], 2023), and studies have documented contamination on gear and skin after fires along with reductions from on-scene decontamination (Fent et al., 2017). Contaminated gear in a passenger compartment extends exposure beyond the fireground to the member's vehicle and, potentially, home.
Purpose and Aims
The purpose of the capstone is to increase post-fire exposure reduction practices among the district's volunteer interior firefighters over one term. The aims are to identify barriers through an anonymous survey; revise the district's existing guideline with members; deliver short drills at all three stations; equip apparatus with decontamination kits and spare hoods; and measure change using the district's exposure forms.
Setting
Kessling Valley Fire Protection District serves a rural valley from three stations. Fifty-eight volunteer members are qualified as interior firefighters and respond from home in personal vehicles. The district has one gear extractor, a washing machine for protective gear, at Station 1. A six-person career crew staffs Station 1 on weekdays. The fire chief has authorized the project, and the authorization letter is on file with the program.
Population
The population is the 58 volunteer interior firefighters. They are the members who enter burning structures and who take gear home in their own vehicles. No sampling is needed; all are included in the guideline, drills and exposure form, and all are invited to the survey.
Exclusions
Each exclusion has a reason.
The career day crew. Career members shower and launder gear on shift at Station 1 and do not drive gear home. Their practices differ, and including them would blur the measure.
Diesel exhaust in the apparatus bays. Exhaust is a real exposure, but it is an engineering problem requiring capture systems and capital funds, not a behavior a health educator can change in a term.
Cancer screening. Screening belongs to the district's occupational physician and to state law on firefighter cancer, not to this project.
Narrowing the project to the volunteers who drive gear home, and to the behaviors they control after a fire, gives the capstone one measurable gap it can actually close in a term, instead of three large problems it could only describe.
Approach
The capstone will use the COM-B model, which treats any behavior as depending on whether a person is able to do it, has the chance to do it and wants to (Michie et al., 2011). The barrier survey will be organized by those three components, and the guideline revision and drills will be matched to the barriers found.
Competencies
The capstone will provide evidence for five primary Areas of Responsibility in the profession's 2020 framework (National Commission for Health Education Credentialing [NCHEC], 2020): Assessment of Needs and Capacity, through the barrier survey; Planning, through the revised guideline; Implementation, through drills and equipment; Evaluation and Research, through the exposure form comparison; and Communication, through the drill card and board presentation. Three secondary areas are Advocacy, Leadership and Management, and Ethics and Professionalism. Each will be claimed only if work at the district provides evidence for it.
Stakeholders
Each party with an interest in the project is engaged in its own way. The fire chief owns the guideline and must adopt any revision; the chief will review drafts at two points, after the barrier survey and before rollout. The training officer schedules drill nights, stocks apparatus and keeps the exposure forms, so the training officer's time is the project's scarcest resource. Station captains decide what happens on their own drill nights and carry the most informal influence over their crews. The board of fire commissioners controls equipment money and will be asked, near the end of the term, to fund what the project shows is needed. Members themselves are the population, and the barrier survey is the first and most direct way their views enter the design.
Evaluation Approach
The primary measure will be the share of member exposures for which the exposure form records gross decontamination, compared across the six months before rollout and the weeks of rollout. That field is already on the form and will not change, so the comparison is fair as far as it goes. Two new fields, hood exchange and how gear went home, will be added when the form is reissued and reported without a baseline. Direct observation at a small number of fires will check whether the form can be trusted. The design has no comparison district, so the proposal makes no causal claim; it can show whether practices changed in this district while the intervention was in place.
Resources
The project needs decontamination kits for six apparatus, about $80 each in water containers, brushes, soap, wipes and bags; sixty spare hoods at about $130 each; three drill nights; and printing for the drill card and forms. The chief has committed the training budget to the kits and the first twenty hoods. The remaining hoods depend on a later request to the board, which is one reason the board presentation sits in Unit 9.
Deliverables and Timeline
Unit 3, methodology defense. Unit 4, evidence synthesis. Unit 5, execution report after five weeks of rollout. Unit 7, competency evidence portfolio. Unit 8, the revised guideline as a practice deliverable. Unit 9, a presentation to the board of fire commissioners. Unit 10, the capstone document. Rollout depends on the barrier survey being completed by the end of Unit 3 and on spare hoods arriving before the first drill.
Risks
Hoods may be delayed by suppliers. Winter weather may complicate on-scene decontamination with water. Members may resent a lieutenant studying their habits. Each risk will be monitored and reported in the execution report.
References
Fent, K. W., Alexander, B., Roberts, J., Robertson, S., Toennis, C., Sammons, D., Bertke, S., Kerber, S., Smith, D., & Horn, G. (2017). Contamination of firefighter personal protective equipment and skin and the effectiveness of decontamination procedures. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, 14(10), 801-814. https://doi.org/10.1080/15459624.2017.1334904
International Agency for Research on Cancer. (2023). Occupational exposure as a firefighter (IARC Monographs on the Identification of Carcinogenic Hazards to Humans, Vol. 132). https://publications.iarc.who.int
Michie, S., van Stralen, M. M., & West, R. (2011). The behaviour change wheel: A new method for characterising and designing behaviour change interventions. Implementation Science, 6, 42. https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-6-42
National Commission for Health Education Credentialing. (2020). Areas of responsibility, competencies and sub-competencies for health education specialists 2020. https://www.nchec.org
HD599 Unit 2 instructions, in plain terms
This proposal unit expects students to turn the Unit 1 problem into a plan the program and the site can approve. A typical prompt lists the problem statement, purpose and aims, setting, population, approach or framework, competencies to be evidenced, deliverables with a timeline, and risks. Scope matters as much as content, so state what the project excludes and why each exclusion was chosen. Name stakeholders and how each will be involved, because a proposal that ignores the people who must approve or carry out the work tends to stall in Unit 5. The evaluation approach should say what will be measured and with what data, even if the method is defended later. Resources and costs should be realistic for the site. Written authorization from the site is usually described rather than reproduced. Most proposals land between six and ten pages.
Inside the HD599 Unit 2 example
The problem statement gives the 13 percent figure and admits that the second half of the problem, gear carried home, is known only by observation. Aims follow in one sentence each. Setting and population describe 58 volunteers who respond from home and one extractor at Station 1. Each exclusion gets its own short paragraph with a reason, and the highlighted sentence explains why narrowing to one measurable gap beats describing three large problems. The chief, training officer, captains, board and members each appear with the decision they control. The approach section applies COM-B in two sentences. Competencies are linked to specific products: the survey to assessment, the guideline to planning, drills to implementation. Evaluation, resources, deliverables and risks close the proposal, with the hood supply and winter weather flagged early.
Reading the HD599 Unit 2 grading rubric
In HD599 the proposal rubric tends to reward a precise, evidenced problem statement and a feasible scope before anything else. Alignment carries heavy weight: aims, methods, deliverables and claimed competencies should connect, so a reviewer can trace each competency to a product. Justified exclusions show judgment and usually score well. The framework earns points only when the proposal says how it will shape the design, not merely that it exists. Stakeholder analysis, a realistic timeline with dependencies and an honest risk list are often scored as a group under planning. Professional writing and APA formatting, including the citation of the competency framework itself, complete the marks. Overclaiming, such as all eight areas at full strength, is a common reason for lost points in this rubric.
HD599 Unit 2 help from the desk
Proposals in this course often fail on scope, promising change across a whole organization or population in one term. Another weak spot is the competency section: listing all eight areas without saying which product will evidence each invites a reviewer to test claims the project cannot support. Some students state the problem without data, or with data from national sources only, so the reader never sees the local gap. Exclusions without reasons look accidental. Timelines that ignore dependencies, such as equipment that must arrive before training, cause trouble in the execution report. If your problem is clear but the plan around it is not, send the Unit 1 post and the site's constraints, and a writer can draft a proposal shaped to your site and term.
Get an HD599 Unit 2 example written to your instructions
The proposal fixes everything that follows, so the free first custom sample, written in 24-48h, commits population, problem and exclusions to paper and ties each competency claim to the work that will prove it. It needs your setting, the problem your Unit 1 post settled on, any figures the site keeps, and the HD599 Unit 2 prompt and rubric. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
More HD599 papers and MS in Health Education samples
- HD599 Unit 1: Capstone Problem Post
- HD599 Unit 3: Methodology Defense
- HD599 Unit 4: Evidence Synthesis
- HD599 Unit 5: Project Execution Report
- HD599 Unit 6: Seminar Reflection
- HD599 Unit 7: Competency Evidence Portfolio
- HD599 Unit 8: Practice Deliverable
- HD599 Unit 9: Professional Presentation
- HD599 Unit 10: Capstone Document
- HD520 Unit 2: Design Rationale Paper
- HD570 Unit 2: Organizational Placement Analysis
- HD535 Unit 2: Theory Selection Paper
- HD560 Unit 2: Evaluation Question Paper
HD599 Unit 2 questions, answered
Should the proposal claim all eight Areas of Responsibility?
Only if the project will genuinely produce evidence for each. Many strong capstones claim fewer at full strength and name the rest as secondary or out of scope. Claiming everything invites a reviewer to test everything. Check whether your program uses the HESPA framework or its own outcomes, and follow whichever your prompt names.
Does the proposal need the site's written permission?
Many sections require evidence that a site has agreed, but the agreement itself is between you, the site and the program. Describe it in the proposal without reproducing signatures or confidential terms. If permission is still pending, say so and name a fallback, such as a project designed but not carried out, in case it does not arrive.
How detailed should the timeline be?
Detailed enough to show each remaining unit's product and what it depends on, often a one-row-per-unit table. The most useful timelines mark dependencies, such as data access needed before the methodology can be defended. Avoid dates the site has not agreed to, and leave visible slack before the final document is due.
Where can I find a free HD599 Unit 2 sample paper?
This page presents a complete Unit 2 capstone proposal for a volunteer fire district's decontamination project, with scope, exclusions, stakeholders, competencies and references.
Why does the proposal exclude the career crew?
Career members shower and launder gear on shift and never drive it home, so their practices differ. Including them would blur the measure the project depends on.