Material Detail

The Brookdale Water Crisis is a scenario-based, online case study designed to support systems thinking, ethical reasoning, and leadership decision-making in the context of a municipal water contamination emergency. The course uses narrative storytelling and an unfolding case structure to simulate a complex public health and infrastructure crisis, allowing learners to experience how events develop over time amid uncertainty, incomplete data, and competing priorities.

Through this unfolding narrative, instructors and learners can use the story as a shared case to interpret emerging evidence, examine stakeholder perspectives, and explore how leadership actions create consequences across interconnected systems. The storyline supports analysis of evolving data, communication breakdowns, and policy trade-offs, encouraging discussion of how decisions ripple through public health, political leadership, organizational performance, and community trust.

Rather than treating water safety as a purely technical or regulatory issue, the course situates the crisis within organizational, political, and ethical contexts. Learners encounter city officials, healthcare providers, utility managers, community members, and advocacy groups, each operating under different incentives and constraints. This structure enables learners to examine how policy decisions, communication strategies, and system alignment influence both short-term response and long-term public confidence.

The storytelling-based design makes the case adaptable for discussion-based classes, role-play, written analysis, or group problem-solving across disciplines such as nursing, public health, emergency management, public administration, environmental studies, and leadership. By combining narrative immersion with systems-level analysis, the Brookdale Water Crisis supports deep engagement and meaningful transfer of learning to real-world public safety challenges.

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