read Eric Eyres Death in Mud Lick and write a five-page paper on it. This paper will address four elements of the course: policy, management, leadership and accountability challenges. While the topics in Mud Lick are jarring and the emotional impact is raw, the descriptions and analyses offer opportunities for students of public policy to take an integrated view of the total policy process and its real impact on individual lives and the public interest. The paper will:
1. Briefly describe the situation you have been assigned. The situation is ” Donal Kiser”. The situation is the involvement in the opioid epidemic of your individual or organization, e.g., the involvement of the doctor, the corporation, the agency, the community member/family, etc. in the epidemic. This part of the paper is to try to present the inside looking out self perspective of the individual or organization. Involvement encompasses the goal or purpose of that individual or organization and the behavior they exhibit in pursuit of that purpose or goal. From their perspective or vantage point, how do they see and/or justify their role in the epidemic relative to other roles and to the public interest?
2. What policy issues are illuminated in your situation? This requirement asks you to step back form the inside looking out of the situation and become an objective analyst of that situation. What are the policy issues that are illuminated by the behavior of your individual or oirganiation, such as controlled substances regulations, or the Hippocratic oath, corporate social responsibility, conflict of interest laws, etc.
3. What management, leadership and accountability issues are associated with the problems in the situation? This third point asks you to continue your objective analysis by focusing on whether the public interest could be better served by modifications, changes, or reforms of management, leadership and accountability processes or practices to better support the public interest. This will involve a review of the course to consider opportunities for improvement, such as revision of integrity standards, revitalization of mission focus, focus on strategic planning and operations, revisiting budget allocation, developing big data analytics, or discretion reviews, etc.
4. What management, leadership and accountability reforms would you suggest based on your reading of Mud Lick? Discuss your reasoning for making this suggestion, including the feasibility and advantages/disadvantages of your suggestion. Also include an overview of some alternative suggestions and why you rejected them.
