PU699 Unit 2 Problem Definition Paper Example

Right Answer, Wrong Day: A Unit 2 Problem Definition Paper Arguing That a Composite City's Beach Advisories Fail on Timing Before They Fail on Bacteria, and Setting the Boundary Every Later Unit Inherits

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

PU699: Master of Public Health Capstone

Unit 2 Problem Definition Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Port Alder, its beaches, its advisory log and its attendance counts are composite; the standards, the bacterial science and the research cited are real.

Problem Statement

At Port Alder's four public beaches in the 2024 and 2025 seasons, the water exceeded the single-sample E. coli value of 235 colony-forming units per 100 milliliters on 64 of 560 sampled beach-days, and a swimming advisory was in place on only 19 of those 64 days, because advisories are based on culture results that arrive the day after sampling.

Magnitude

The figures come from lining up two records nobody had compared: the laboratory results by sampling date and the advisory log by posting date. Across both seasons, 64 sampled beach-days exceeded the standard, 11.4 percent of the total. On 45 of them, no advisory was up. On a further 42 beach-days, an advisory was posted when that day's water met the standard, closing beaches to swimming for no reason the data support. The program's annual reports list exceedances and advisories in separate tables and never compare them, which is why the mismatch went unnoticed. Lifeguard counts give a rough sense of exposure. An average summer weekday brings about 850 swimmers to the four beaches. Forty-five unprotected exceedance days therefore represent tens of thousands of swim visits in water the program's own standard defines as unsafe. The federal recreational water criteria are built around an estimated illness rate, gastrointestinal illness among people who swim in water at the criteria levels, which is the health outcome behind every advisory (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], 2012). The problem is real and not an artifact. Sampling frequency, laboratory methods and the standard did not change across the two seasons, and exceedance rates were similar to the three years before.

Population

Everyone who swims at the four public beaches, residents and visitors alike, with particular weight on children. Children spend more time in shallow water, play with their heads under, and swallow more. Swimmers are far more likely than people who only wade or paddle to report swallowing water (Dorevitch et al., 2011), and a beach full of children is a beach full of the most exposed swimmers. Within the city, the paper weights attention to Mill Creek Beach, beside the mouth of the creek that drains the east side, which accounted for 31 of the 64 exceedances. The capstone keeps all four beaches in view, and the data analysis will test whether Mill Creek's pattern differs rather than assume it. The program measures the right thing with the right standard. It reports the answer a day after the question has changed.

Causes

Causes the department can influence:

1. Laboratory turnaround. Culture methods need about a day, and samples collected Friday are not read until Saturday, when no one posts advisories.

2. The decision rule. The program uses persistence, assuming tomorrow's water will resemble today's, without testing whether that assumption holds.

3. Information it does not use. Rainfall, wave height, turbidity and creek discharge are measured every morning by other agencies and never consulted.

Causes it cannot influence directly:

4. Weather. Heavy rain washes bacteria from streets and lawns into the creek and onto the beach within hours.

5. Gulls and sand. Foreshore sand at Great Lakes beaches can hold E. coli at high concentrations and feed it into shallow water, with gull activity raising levels the following day (Whitman & Nevers, 2003).

6. Combined sewer overflows during large storms, a city infrastructure problem with its own long-term plan.

What Is Already in Place

Weekday sampling at all four beaches, an accredited laboratory, an advisory protocol in writing, a phone line, a web page and a lifeguard staff who already report daily conditions by radio. The department has never used a predictive model or rapid testing method, though both are used at other Great Lakes beaches.

Boundary

In scope: the four public beaches, the swimming season, E. coli and the timing of advisories. Out of scope: harmful algal blooms, rip currents, private beaches, the city's sewer overflow program and enforcement against polluters. Every later unit inherits this boundary. If the data show the problem is concentrated at one beach, the capstone will narrow rather than widen.

Who and What the Records Miss

The paper's numbers describe weekdays only. The beaches are busiest on Saturdays and Sundays, when no samples are taken and the Friday result, read on Saturday, is not posted until Monday. Every weekend of the season therefore runs on Thursday's water. The records also miss illness. Nobody reports a stomachache after a swim to the health department, and most people who feel unwell for a day after a beach visit never connect the two, so the program has no local illness data and must rely on the published relationship between bacteria levels and illness. Finally, the records miss the people who stayed away. Each unnecessary advisory sends families elsewhere, sometimes to unguarded stretches of shoreline, and the cost of a false closure never appears in a table. A problem definition that counted only exceedances would describe half of what the program gets wrong.

What Success Would Look Like

The capstone does not aim at fewer exceedances, which depend on rain and sewers. It aims at a better match between advisories and the water on the day they are posted. Success would mean that the share of exceedance days with an advisory in place rises well above the current 30 percent, while the number of advisories on days that met the standard stays the same or falls. Both numbers can be measured every season from records the department already keeps, which makes the goal testable without a new survey or a new laboratory.

Why This Is a Public Health Problem Worth a Capstone

It affects many people every summer, falls squarely within the department's authority, and can be improved without new law. It also has a measurable outcome the term can produce: the share of exceedance days with an advisory in place, which the department can track every season. And it builds on work the department already does, so the capstone's product would change a decision the writer makes every summer morning rather than sit in a report. That practical link is the strongest argument for choosing it over a broader problem with weaker data.

References

Dorevitch, S., Panthi, S., Huang, Y., Li, H., Michalek, A. M., Pratap, P., Wroblewski, M., Liu, L., Scheff, P. A., & Li, A. (2011). Water ingestion during water recreation. Water Research, 45(5), 2020-2028. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2010.12.006

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2012). Recreational water quality criteria (Office of Water 820-F-12-058). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Whitman, R. L., & Nevers, M. B. (2003). Foreshore sand as a source of Escherichia coli in nearshore water of a Lake Michigan beach. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 69(9), 5555-5562. https://doi.org/10.1128/AEM.69.9.5555-5562.2003