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Ross's approach can be useful to professionals in advertising, journalism, and other media because of the frequently competing roles they must fulfill (Wilkins, 2016). For instance, a health communication message meant to address a problem of childhood obesity could be considered beneficent since it is a serious public and individual health problem. However, some messages may have unintended effects (Thorson and Duffy, 2016). Visuals are very powerful and can evoke visceral responses, short‐circuiting our processes in evaluating the worth of messages (Page and Duffy, 2016). A good example is the Strong4Life campaign from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta that used images of obese children believing that such images would motivate pediatricians, families, and schools to provide supportive actions. However, some critics said that the campaign stigmatized and shamed overweight children (Lohr, 2012).

Thus, the duty to do no harm and duty for beneficence come into conflict and the multiple duties of public health professionals and those creating the campaign arise. According to Wilkins (2016), Ross's typology encourages us to look at the specifics and the context of circumstances and decide which duty outweighs the others in a given situation.