A health intervention plan - Essay Example

? Intervention Plan A health intervention plan refers to a variety of actions that are taken to improve health or to change the course or direction of a disease. The plan is a set of measures that may involve a change in the environment, a change in the social practices, the diagnosis, treatment and control of diseases so as to avoid a health crisis. Such a plan is also aimed at improving the health and quality of life of the community. This is done by setting up ways of preventing and treating diseases, attending to physical and mental conditions, surveillance of these conditions and lastly through the promotion of healthy behaviors (Anderson & McFarlane, 2010). Implementing a community health intervention plans is a difficult and labor intensive process that requires dedication and resources from all the stakeholders in order to ensure success. The process is tedious and involves a variety of issues. First of all the implementers must have a clear goal or purpose why they want to undertake the exercise, and the community they want to involve in such a plan. They must identify the health problem that exists and what they want to achieve by setting up the intervention plan. The implementers need this, as it will help them to communicate to the community why such an intervention is needed and why their participation is of great importance. The next thing in the process is to have knowledge of the community in terms of its economic conditions, political setup, norms and values, demographic information, history, and their previous reactions to such plans. For the implementation process to succeed the implementers also need understand the community’s perceptions of the people conducting the exercise. At this stage of the process it is important to establish relationships, work on trust, and engage with both the formal and the informal leaders of the community. The process also requires the participation of the community organizations in mobilizing leaders and the community to ensure the success of the process. It is known that for such a program to be successful the community must play the integral part in all spheres of the program. In the process of implementing the program, it is of great importance to let the people own the process rather than forcing ideas on them. This will make it easier for the implementers of the project to accomplish the task successfully (Katz, 2010). The implementers then move to another stage of identifying and mobilizing the community’s assets such as skills and experiences of individuals, developing capacities and resources such as materials and economic power. These are used for continuously to implement decisions and to initiate actions. Here training in leadership, meetings and discussions will be of great importance with experts who will deal with a variety of issues (Anderson & McFarlane, 2010). The last part of the process is to engage the people full in the intervention program by initiating actions and interventions to the community. These should be flexible and enough to help the community in solving their changing needs. As the community participates in these activities, they experience a high level of behavior change. The implementation process requires commitment from the organization and other stakeholders to ensure its success. The commitment will come from continuous training and offering of technical assistance to emerging problems (Katz, 2010). The community nurse plays a variety of roles in such health intervention plan. He/she acts as a leader by guiding the community in coming up with ways of improving the health of the community. He/she identifies the problems that require interventions and proposes ways to address them. He/she will also act as an advocate for good health to the community by arguing on behalf of the community so that they get the best health care services available. Another role is to construct caring such that they create caring environments by assessing, controlling, correcting and preventing factors that would affect the health of the community. He/ she also partners with others in planning for interventions to solve health cases for the community (Katz, 2010). The implementation process has both positive and negative effects to the society. First the society gains by having measures that address health issues. Second they also gain because of the reduction in the infection rate of the diseases as a result of behavior change of the individuals. On the negative side they lose because some of those intervention measures might not work resulting in the wastage of efforts and resources in trying to address the health issue in question (Anderson & McFarlane, 2010). There are various ethical issues that arise during the implementation process of the health intervention plan. First of all is the issue of confidentiality, it must be maintained at all times or else the community might see the action as intrusion of privacy. To solve this all records of written or taped must be kept confidential. Issues to do with consent and disclosure of information must be adhered to. Consent to allow implementers get information and also allowing particular medical services to be offered to them. To solve this, get the participants to sign records of consent to the intervention plan (Rabinowitz, n.d.). Evaluating a health intervention is a difficult task and usually a variety of issues are considered. The program could be a success because the desired goal or purpose of the project was achieved. On the other hand it could be evaluated and found to have failed if the goal was not achieved. If it failed the likely causes to be looked at would be the delivery of the intervention plan or a problem during the planning process. Other factors that could be evaluated include the cost of implementing the intervention program versus the outcomes of the program. If the outcomes outweigh the cost then the intervention plan is said to be successful otherwise it will have failed. Other criteria include the level of behavior change and the quality of the outcomes of the intervention plan (ASTDN, n.d.). In order for such intervention plans to succeed, it is recommended that a thorough research be done about the community and the health problems that exist. This will provide a lot of information on the intervention programs that are likely to succeed. The second thing is that the implementers need to engage the community in all spheres of the plan. They should engage them in providing solutions to the health problems (Rabinowitz, n.d.). All recommendations should come from the community and not the implementers. This will ensure participation in such activities and foster greater behavior change. References Anderson Elizabeth T. & McFarlane Judith M. (2010), Community as partner: Theory and practice in Nursing. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins: Philadelphia. USA ASTDN (Association of State and Territorial Directors of Nursing) (n.d.), The Public Health Nurse’s Role in Achieving Health Equity: Eliminating Inequalities in Health. Retrieved 8 22, 2011, from http://www.astdn.org/downloadablefiles/ASTDN-health-equity-11-08.pdf Katz H. Mitchell (2010), Evaluating clinical and public heath interventions: a practical guide to study design and statistics. Cambridge University Press: New York, USA Rabinowitz, P. (n.d.). Ethical Issues in Community Interventions, Retrieved 8 22, 2011, from The Community Tool Box: http://ctb.ku.edu/en/tablecontents/sub_section_main_1165.aspx Read More