Health Project Planning Flashcards
Health Project Planning
- Planning requires a critical analysis of the problem to be addressed. Problem analysis is important for developing a goal and objectives for the project that are realistic and achievable. Once the goal and objectives are set, strategies for achieving them can be determined. Resources needed in the project, and ways to obtain them, are then identified. The planning process also includes deciding how the project will be managed, sustained and evaluated.
Major Steps in Planning, Sustaining, and Evaluating a Health Promotion and Project
Step 1: Identify the issues or health problems in the community.
Step 2: Prioritize the issues or health problems.
Step 3: Identify risk factors and set the goal for the project
Step 4: Determine contributing factors and state objectives for the project
Step 5: Determine what the strategies will be.
Step 6: Develop action plan
Step 7: Sustain the project
Step 8: Evaluate the project
Step 1: Identify the issues or health problems in the community.
a. Needs assessment
- a process of collecting information that will give a good indication of the priority needs of a community.
- helps with allocating resources and making decisions about where to start with health promotion work.
b. Sharing information from the needs assessment -This process will:
o raise community awareness about the issues and possible underlying causes.
o stimulate discussion about ways to address the issues
o allow the community to be involved in planning and decision-making about
c. Consider baseline data
- information gathered during the needs assessment may be able to be used as ‘baseline data’. Baseline data describe the situation or condition at the time the project or intervention starts.
Step 2: Prioritize the issues or health problems.
- At the end of Step 1, the project team will have a list of major issues and potential target groups for the project.
Needs and priorities vary from individual to individual, family to family, group to group. It is important to work out criteria to sort out which issue the project will address.
Step 3: Identify risk factors and set the goal for the project
- Risk factors - are any aspect of behaviour, society or the environment that are directly linked to the health problem. Risk factors lead to or directly cause the problem.
- Addressing a problem successfully will require the project to focus on the underlying causes or issues that led to the problem in the first place. In other words, the goal and objectives of a project need to relate to the underlying causes or issues.
Step 4: Determine contributing factors and state objectives for the project
- Contributing factors - are any aspect of behaviour, society or the environment that leads to the risk factors developing. Contributing factors enable or reinforce the risk factors. They can relate to individual, financial, political, educational, environmental, or other issues
Developing the Project Goal and Objectives
- The goal and objectives:
o make the plan clear and focus the energies of the project team
o let people know what they can expect to happen as a result of the project
o are the basis for planning the evaluation of the project
Goals
- The goal is about making changes to the risk factor addressed by the project.
- The goal indicates what the planned, longer-term outcome of the project is.
- It is also intended to inspire, motivate and focus people and encourage team cooperation.
Objectives
- Objective state what changes the project will make to the contributing factors.
- The objectives indicate what the impact will be on the contributing factors during the timeframe of the project.
- The objectives are about what has to change in the short term to get closer to achieving the project goal.
Goals and Objectives
- A well written ‘goal and objectives’ states who will achieve how much of what by when.
- Developing a clear, achievable goal and objectives requires good baseline data.
Step 5: Determine what the strategies will be.
- After the objectives are developed, the strategies are determined. Strategies describe what it is that the project team will do to try and make the changes required to achieve the objectives.
Relationship between the goal, objectives and strategies
o The process for planning a project begins with the big picture (issue or problem). It is an analysis of the big picture issue that gives the framework for developing the plan - from the longer-term goal, to more specific objectives, down to the actual strategies, and finally the detail of individual actions.
Step 6: Develop action plan
- Once the strategies of the project are determined, the project team can write the action plan. The action plan includes all the specific activities, large and small, that will need to be done to implement each of the strategies. It also says who will carry out these activities, when they will be completed and how they will be evaluated.
- The more detail that is worked out for the strategies, the easier it will be to accurately identify all the activities to be done. If the project is large, with many stages, it may not be possible to detail all the specific activities at the beginning of the project. If the project objectives must occur in a special time sequence, wait for some early work in the project to be completed before working out the detail of the later phases.
- Detailed documentation of the activities, responsibilities and time frames will assist each team member to plan his or her part of the project. Detailed documentation is also important for maintaining accountability within the team and between the team and the community or funding agency.
- The action plan will also list the resources required to do the project successfully. Resources will be required throughout the whole project, from needs assessment through putting strategies into action to final report writing.
- Resources can include human resources, financial resources, materials, equipment and venues.
Step 7: Sustain the project
- Planning for sustainability means thinking of ways to keep the project (or important parts of it) going after its official end. It then becomes an ongoing part of community activity.
- Many factors can threaten the sustainability of the project. Project teams need to be on the lookout for these factors and have a plan for dealing with them. Sustainability needs to be considered from the initial planning stages of a project.
Step 8: Evaluate the project
- Evaluating a project is about looking critically at what is happening in the project and making a judgement about its value, worth or benefit (see the word value’ in evaluate).
- Evaluation is important because it can tell us:
o how the project is going
o what effect it is having
o what changes we need to make to improve it
