Health Promotion Program - Coursework Example

Running Head: HEALTH PROMOTION PROGRAM HEALTH PROMOTION PROGRAM Health promotion program Part 5: Goals and Objectives Objectives are steps taken in pursuit of a goal. While a goal is a future event toward which a committed endeavor is directed. Identification of quality life issues in the target group can help in setting goals and objectives for a health promotion program. The theory set of beliefs or model used to collect and interpret data can determine the outcome of the planning. Data can be collected using three approaches: Behavioral, biomedical and social environmental approach. In behavioral approach, one is concerned with behaviors of individuals and how they can lead to disability and disease. Other factors related to individuals are also taken into account, such as alienation, absenteeism, crime, discrimination, happiness, illegitimacy, riots, self esteem, unemployment, welfare etc. Here, strategies for intervention for heart health should include sensitizing the target group about the benefits of a low fat diet, design special programs to encourage people to quit smoking, communication campaign on the benefits of physical activity, programs to lower stress in the work place and appealing through lobbies to the food industry to provide low fat alternatives. The data collected would be about physical activity, fat consumption, presence of stress in the workplace and levels of smoking. This would be followed by setting goals and objectives in terms of these outcomes as well as the blood pressure and cholesterol measured from biological model (Lorig & Gonzalez,1996). In biomedical model or approach, one focuses on disease processes and factors which are physical in nature and agreeable to medical intervention. Screening for high blood pressure or hypercholesterolemia can be used to identify heart disease so as to determine for availability of drugs to control cholesterol and high blood pressure. If one uses social environmental approach to set goal and objectives, one will be concerned with socio economic, psychosocial and physical environments which create conditions for wellness or ill health. This involves analyzing factors such as peace and security belonging to the community, housing, food, clean air, adequate income, soil, water and soil, safe working environment etc. In this model, health promotion strategies include community development, healthy public policies, political advocacy and supportive environment and personal skills development (Love, 1983). Businesses can be appealed on to provide facilities or opportunities for physical activity, work with isolated individuals to develop a sense of community and advocacy with the government to provide enough income. The models prompt someone to look for information about the target group and provide someone with a wide array of strategies fro which a suitable one can be selected to much the need being assessed. Program goal A program goal is positive statement which is broad and direction setting describing what someone wants to achieve through direct concerted efforts (Lorig & Gonzalez,1996). Goals are descriptive global statements. Identifying goals and objectives of the target population is important in that it helps in developing an evaluation plan and understanding the theory of why you are choosing to define your program in a specific way. The desired achievement of a program is summarized in a goal statement. Most often you will find that most health promotion programs have a single goal though for a complicated program, it can have several goals. The following are examples of health promotion goals: 1. “.To ensure that economically disadvantaged mothers have access to safe, affordable and nutritious food” 2. “. All people of reproductive age achieve and maintain optimum reproductive health” 3. The field is still exploring effectiveness of interventions. Objectives One can define an objective as being a brief statement specifying the desired effect, or impact of a health promotion program, that is to say how much of what should happen to whom and when. Example of a long-term program objective is: “ By the end of the third year, the incidence of teen pregnancies in Heathsville will decline by 65%”. Party 6: The Intervention In order to intervene for behavioral change, the precede-proceed model can be used. It helps in health promotion planning as it provides a comprehensive format for identifying factors related to behaviors, program implementation and health problems. Several factors contributing to health behavior are outlined below: 1. Predisposing Factors which the forces are motivating a group or an individual to take action such as attitudes, beliefs, values, cultural norms, knowledge etc. This determines the extent to which behavior can be predicted. 2. Enabling factors refers to resources and new personal skills needed to form a behavior. These health behaviors and factors determine to what extent their absence will prevent an action from happening. 3. Reinforcing factors determine what outcomes are to maintained when certain incentives are provided for health behaviors. Understanding this behavioral model which is problem oriented and does not focus on health outcomes. Since this model can be adapted in each category of factors to include social environmental conditions which can in turn be used as an emphasis for identifying strengths and assets. Our Focus activity will be Hide and seek: Our modality for treatment will be a family, individual. Goals: To provide a safe environment for clients to verbalize and discuss their feelings, as well as increase open communication regarding various emotional states and finally, to strengthen family relationships through direct communication. Materials: Tape Index cards with various feeling written on them Prizes such as stickers or small individually wrapped candies (optional) Preparation Before the session begins, you should write various words on index cards such as brave, happy, guilty, scared, angry, excited, sad etc. You can print the cards on card stock and laminate them for durability. Draw a smiley face on the card if candies or prizes are included. Hide the index cards in the room at varying levels of difficulty using the tape. Hide the cards in obvious places for young clients and for older clients hide the cards in secretive places. Description The popular childhood game of hide and seek is used as a therapy in this activity. However, the clients will not have to hide as the cards have been hidden with various feeling words on them. Note that in many situations, people will often ignore their feelings and hide them instead of having to deal with them. Despite this being effective, people still hide their feelings which continue to bother them until they are brought out into the open and addressed expeditiously. In this activity which is kind of a game, through hide and seek, hidden feelings are sought after throughout the course of the game and they are brought out into the open and discussed. The intervention commences when players take turns finding the hidden feeling cards and processing a time they experienced the feeling illustrated on the index card. If a player finds the optional cards with a smiley face, he or she gets to choose a feeling of his choice for discussion and afterwards he or she receives a prize in form of a small candy or a sticker. When the game is over, the activity needs to be processed by asking the following questions: I. What feeling was the easiest to discuss? II. What feeling was hardest to discuss? III. Who is the easiest person for you to talk about your feeling in the family and why? IV. Is it better to talk or hide about your feeling and why? V. Who is the hardest person to talk to about the feelings and why? VI. How do you think your family can talk about your feelings better and easier? VII. What did you learn from the activity? Discussion The purpose of this intervention is to target communication by providing an opportunity for the clients to directly commununicate, process and identify their emotions. For some clients, language is a major issue in communicating as they totally lack masterly of basic communication techniques (Fetterman, 1989). Therefore one of the aim of this activity is to build and expand the clients emotional vocabulary and enable a healthy and conducive environment for expressing ones emotions. This activity can enhance expression of emotions that occur as hidden feelings. Feelings have been chosen for intervention to enable the therapist prescribe emotions according to the clients presenting issues, treatment goals or problems. Identified and processed emotions can be common emotions that can be used to support communication around feelings or channeled towards a specific topic such as abuse, death or divorce (Rebmann, 2002). The description section shows that cards with a smiley face can be hidden alongside the feeling index cards. A player who comes across such a card is given the opportunity to make a choice of what emotion he or she would want to discuss. The player is afterwards given a treat, a small prize or a sticker. Though the choice is an optional element, it helps in lowering the client’s defenses through the incentive of winning something during the activity; this makes it more of a playful game hence improving on the effectiveness of the technique. The emotions of the clients need to be validated and normalized throughout the activity as discussion continues. It is also advisable to incorporate an additional element of coping skills to manage emotional distress i.e. identify and discuss coping skills during the discussion of emotions. Part 7: Evaluation A health promotion program needs to be reviewed to establish its feasibility and a logic model needs to be used in the review. Program evaluation can be defined as the systematic gathering, analysis and data reporting about a program to aid decision making (Rebmann, 2002). It helps produce the very much needed information to improve the effectiveness of efforts for health promotion. There are various reasons as to why health promotion practitioners undertake evaluation: i. To collect evidence on the effectiveness or impact of the program. ii. To facilitate transparency and accountability to the funders, volunteers, clients, community or staff. iii. Identify ways of improving the program such as identifying needs for the target group and improve usefulness of the program materials. iv. To compare programs with other programs. v. Assess efficiency of a program. vi. To test a hypothesis for research purposes. Types of Evaluation There are three types of evaluation, namely; Formative evaluation, process evaluation and summative evaluation. Process evaluation focuses on ongoing programs by examining tasks and procedures involved in providing a program. It includes, among other things such things as; tracking quantity and description of people who are reached by the program, as well as tracking quantity of types and services provided etc. Formative evaluation focuses on programs that are being developed. It occurs during the initial planning stages to see to it that a program is developed based on shareholders needs. It includes among other things things such as; needs assessment, evaluability assessment, program logic models, pre-testing program materials audience materials etc. Summative evaluation normally focuses on programs that are already completed or underway (Campbell & Stanley, 1963). It looks into programs both intended and unintended effects. In outcome evaluation, it involves looking answers to questions such as “ did the program meet its stated goals and objectives?” and for impact evaluation “….Did the program make a difference?” Formative pre-testing materials include; understanding of materials, readability, offensiveness, interest, aesthetic value and identification of key messages. One possible method for process, impact and outcome evaluation is the qualitative methods such as focus groups, in-depth interviews and open ended survey questions respectively. For summative and formative methods, quantitative methods such as process tracking forms/records or analysis of large data sets would be suitable. Descriptive evaluations will use pre and post test to measure a program before and after implementation. References Lorig, K. & Gonzalez, (1996) V. “Outcome Measures for Health Education and other Health Care Interventions” Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, Love, A. L., (1983)”Developing effective internal evaluation” In House, E. R. and Wooldridge. Rebmann, J., (2002)” New Directions for Program Evaluation: A Publication of the Evaluation Research Societ”. San Franciscoz: Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers. Fetterman, D., ( 1989) “ Ethnography : step by step” Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Campbell, D.T & Stanley, J.C., (1963)” Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research. Chicago: Rand McNally”. Read More