Planning is essential for success. Throughout your degree program, you have learned about the different planning models used in the field of health education.
Review the CDCynergy Guide the to refresh your understanding of health program planning.
For this assignment, complete the following:
Select an example health concern Diabetes and use this example to justify each component of a program plan.
Be very careful when selecting this health concern as it will be used in your weekly assignments and for your Final Project.
You may want to look ahead and review the other assignments instructions to help guide you in selecting an appropriate health concern that you will reference for the entirety of this course.
Describe, in detail, how you will approach each component of the program plan. Be specific with your descriptions of each component, as you present the overall idea of the plan.
Your plan must include, but is not limited to, the following components: needs assessment, program design, implementation, and evaluation. Keep in mind that this is a plan for a program, not the program itself. Your assignment must be a minimum of four pages in length (excluding title and reference pages), and should include a minimum of four scholarly sources, three of which must be retrieved from the Ashford University Library.
Please identify the database that you retrieved the scholarly resource from at the end of each reference as illustrated in this week's "Required Resources." Your assignment should be formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.
CDCynergy Guide
Phase 1 Describe the problem
Before you begin the health communication planning and evaluation process, take some time to explore the problem:
- Write a problem statement
- Assess the problem's relevance to your program
- Describe the problem more fully
- Determine if distinct subgroups are affected by the problem
- Further delineate the problem by using descriptive epidemiology
- Describe the problem for any subgroups you may want to explore further
- Assess the factors that can affect the project's direction, including related strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT)
The first phase should not be labor intensive. You can probably answer most questions from your own knowledge or with a quick reference to easy-to-find resources.
At the end of this phase, you will be able to print out several documents:
- A description of the problem(s)
- A rationale for why your agency should address the problem
- A list of factors that can affect your project
Phase 2 Analyze the problem
Phase 2 relies on analytic epidemiologic methods to delineate the causes of the problem you identified in the previous phase. Based on this analysis you are asked to identify and select intervention activities that strike at the root of the problem determinants.
The specific steps in this phase include:
- List or diagrammatically illustrate the direct and indirect causes of each subproblem that may require intervention.
- Prioritize and select subproblems that need intervention(s).
- Develop goals for each subproblem. That is, specify the impact you want to have on the problem.
- Examine relevant theories, intervention models, and best practices for potential interventions.
- Consider strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT), and ethics of intervention options.
- For each subproblem, select the intervention(s) you plan to use and develop a logic model that illustrates how each selected intervention will address the causal factors of the problem.
- Explore additional resources and new partners.
Acquire funding and solidify partnerships. Develop plans for interaction with both staff and partners.
Phase 3 Plan Intervention
This phase is where communication planning begins in earnest. You will decide whether communication will be used as a dominant intervention or to support other intervention activities. After this has been determined you will identify and segment audiences, formulate communication goals and objectives, and conduct formative research.
The results of your research in this phase will be used to develop a creative brief. This brief will be used to inform the development of messages and the testing and selection of settings, channel-specific activities, and materials that will be used to disseminate your messages to intended audiences. The specific steps in this phase include:
- For each subproblem, decide whether communication is needed as a dominant intervention or as support for other intervention(s).
o If communication is used as a dominant intervention, list possible audiences.
o If communication is to be used to support Community Services, Engineering, and/or Policy/Enforcement interventions, list possible audiences to be reached in support of each selected intervention.
- Determine whether potential audiences contain any segments large enough and unique enough to justify a separate communication intervention.
- Decide which audience segment(s) you intend to reach and influence with your communication efforts.
- Write communication goals for each selected audience segment.
- Examine and decide on communication-relevant theories and models to gain insight into 1) ways to achieve your communication goals and 2) direction for your formative research.
- Undertake formative research by reviewing the literature and conducting necessary primary and secondary research to acquire information needed to help plan and achieve communication goals.
- For each audience segment, write profiles that elaborate on relevant theories and practices and that summarize the results of your formative research, including information on possible concepts/messages, settings, channel-specific activities, and support materials.
- Rewrite communication goals (from Step 3.4) as measurable communication objectives that explicitly state what you want each audience segment to know, feel, and do.
- Write a creative brief to provide guidance in selecting appropriate concepts/messages, settings, activities, and materials.
Confirm plans with appropriate stakeholders, discuss the need for evaluation, and address requirements of time and resources.
Phase 4 Develop Intervention
In this phase you will use the creative brief developed in the previous phase to guide you in the process of testing and selecting concepts, messages, settings, channel-specific activities, and materials.
The decisions in carrying out these steps will culminate in a communication plan that lays out who (including partners) will do what, when, where and how often in executing your communication activities.
The specific steps included in this process are:
- Work with partners to draft a timetable, budget, and plan for developing and testing concepts, messages, settings, activities, and materials.
- Develop and test creative concepts with intended audiences. Concepts should be based on your theoretical focus and the results of your formative research.
- Develop and pretest messages with intended audiences.
Messages should be based on theory and the results of your formative research, including concept testing.
- Pretest and select settings, the places where you hope to expose your audience to messages.
- Select, integrate, and test channel-specific communication activities.
- Identify and /or develop, pretest, and select materials.
- Decide on roles and responsibilities among staff and partners to execute communication plan.
- Produce materials for dissemination.
- Finalize and briefly summarize the communication implementation plan.
Share and confirm the communication plan with appropriate stakeholders.
Phase 5 Plan Evaluation
The purpose of this phase is to provide guidance on how to systematically conceptualize, plan, execute, and provide meaningful and timely feedback on an evaluation.
The steps that are recommended here include:
- Identifying and engaging stakeholders.
- Describing the program to be evaluated.
- Determining what information stakeholders need, and when they need it.
- Writing intervention standards that correspond with the different types of evaluation that will be conducted.
- Deciding on the sources of information and the methods that will be used to gather data on stakeholder questions and intervention standards.
- Developing an evaluation design that describes how methods will be applied in collecting credible data from the various sources of information you decided on in the previous step.
- Developing data analysis and reporting plans and feedback channels.
- Formulating agreements and developing internal and external communication plans with staff and partners.
- Preparing an evaluation timetable and budget.
Formulating an evaluation implementation plan and sharing it with appropriate staff and stakeholders.
Phase 6 Implement Plan
In Phase 6 you will merge your implementation and evaluation plans. After integrating these plans you will take steps to ensure that the communication and evaluation activities are executed as planned.
This phase also provides guidance on how to make the launch itself a news event and use the publicity generated around your kick-off to help publicize your health message. In addition, this phase will also help you to:
- maximize unexpected opportunities
- diffuse potential threats, and
- document and disseminate feedback and lessons learned to appropriate audiences.
The specific steps included in this process are:
- Integrate communication and evaluation plans.
- Execute communication and evaluation plans.
- Manage the communication and evaluation activities.
- Document feedback and lessons learned.
- Modify program components based on feedback.
Disseminate lessons learned and evaluation findings.