Community Outreach Program - Essay Example

? Community Outreach Program Valanie Lezama Mercy College Introduction A community outreach program was initiated by Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn, New York targeting to assist its population of about 600000 people. The hospital intends to create a medical awareness campaign that will facilitate the provision of medical services to patients who normally do not have the ability to visit the hospital. This campaign will be carried out through various methods including scheduling door-to-door patient visits. Although this program is targeting everyone, it will focus on the elderly population with chronic illnesses. The hospital has a reputation of providing high quality medical care and must ensure that the methods used meets the compliance requirements of The New York State Department of Health. Coney Island Hospital is committed to providing quality care with compassion and dignity to all patients in the community by offering accessible, efficient and cost effective services. The outreach program will provide sugar and blood pressure checks, a basic eyes nose and throat checkup and measuring the respiration of the patients. This program if successfully implemented could make Cohen Island Hospital be identified as a leader in provision of health services and thus receive more funds from the government due to good services. Community Outreach Program Methods to Reach Targeted Populace There are various avenues available to Coney Island Hospital in its effort to ensure that this program is accessible to all members of the community. The program will require its medical providers to alter their regular treatment schedules in the hospital to go conduct door to door health checks in patients’ home. The providers will begin in areas with low-income people as they are the ones most likely to be affected by diseases due to their inability to afford medical care (Walraven, 2012). In order to do it safely, door-to-door program would better be conducted during morning hours. However, if the hospital is willing to hire night security, night visitations could be carried out as well. The disadvantage of conducting a daytime campaign is the act of having to travel to different residences in order to visit people who may not be home. Night time visitations have the advantage of having the majority of people indoors and therefore more effective. Door to door campaigns are one of the most effective methods of reaching out to everyone in the society (PAHO, 2005) as they give people or the populace targeted the privacy in their homes. These campaigns are however not cost-effective as extra expenses are incurred when medical personnel are dispatched to go on door-to-door visitations. The transport costs are an added expense which is not the case with in-hospital treatments. This method is also extremely time consuming and will require more than six months to be successfully completed. The source of funding of the program must be considered carefully as it is a crucial for the success of this outreach project. Due to the enormous cost of the program, one option is involving the State of New York to fund the program since it is a community project aimed at benefiting the residents of Coney Island. Moreover, as the services offered at a medical checkup are generally of a basic level, Coney Island Hospital will request medical student volunteers to come and assist in the work as part of their internship program as they get training from their supervisors. The checkups that do not call injections or prescription of medicine can be performed by them upon training thus saving time for senior staff who will do the more sophisticated work. The students should be those of senior level who are already familiar with checkup procedures so that the hospital does not need to invest more funds in training. This will give them an opportunity to acquire hands-on experience as well as add credit to their coursework if the hospital is willing to collaborate with universities from the area or to get staff from the medical reserve corps to assist (Cole & Connel, 2012). Furthermore, to reduce additional costs during the program, the hospital could acquire second hand vehicles for transporting medicines and instruments that the medical staff will use during the door to door although this will raise the cost of vehicle insurance considerably. Evaluation of the program by use of the logic model would be beneficial as using it ensures ideas and assumptions of community-based outreaches are clear to the various stakeholders because communication gets facilitated and ownership of the concept is shared. At its simplest form, a logic model can reveal program components by analyzing the input, activities, output, outcome and impact in an organized manner. Coney Island Hospital will also alert and encourage members of the public to come to the hospital in order to receive free treatment and checkups for a given period by employing the use of public service announcements (Brookmeyer & Stroup, 2003). The hospital will have a few mobile clinics in public areas for people to come and receive services, with the use of these public clinics, the hospital can now offer better and effective services to most of the people in Coney Island. The doctors and nurses will also experience less fatigue as they will not be required to move to different locations. Having mobile clinics at a specific location also means that more people can be attended to by medical personnel during a given period of time. In addition, patients in Coney Island can walk into the mobile clinics at their convenience where they will be accorded the privacy of one-on-one consultation. This will imply that people have a forum to discuss their ailments in confidence, which in turn allows the doctor to have a better record of their health. The funding of the mobile clinics will only incur high costs if the hospital decides to check the entire population at the same time (Miller & Zawistowski, 2012). The main advantage of the mobile clinic approach is that the quality of services provided is much higher compared to the door to door approach. However, there is the risk that not all members of the public will voluntarily go to these checkup points to receive treatment (Barnes & Radermacher, 2003). By setting up a marketing strategy prior to the launch of the project Coney Island Hospital could ensure that all members of the community are aware about it ensuring a high turnout. A participatory approach would be best in gauging the success of this program; it opens the door to making targets and the implementation process of the outreach program clear because participation of multiple stakeholders would probably reveal conflicts as was counts as hindering the success of the program. Methods for including community stakeholders as well as intended end users in valuing the program are essentially those of participatory planning and evaluation (Ottoson & Green, 2005). Recommendations The best method for Coney hospital to implement its health awareness campaign is the use of door-to-door method. Despite the time needed to fully implement this method, it is more effective than the other methods as it ensures that more members of the community are attended to and their medical needs addressed. The efficacy of the program, however, is heavily dependent on the amount of funding it receives. Therefore, the hospital will be requesting funds from The New York Health Department or the state government to sponsor the program. Coney Island Hospital’s competitive strategy is to position itself as the trailblazer in providing medi-care to all members of the community and therefore will be willing to collaborate with other hospitals in the area and will fund the project provided that the people on hire will be ready to be associated with Coney Island Hospital. By proving itself to be successful in this campaign, it will be in a position to receive more funding for future projects that it will have and thus lead to growth of the hospital. Due to its position as a public hospital it will not face competition from private hospitals as they will find it difficult to raise such a level of capital. By working with other public hospitals and if they agree to exchange information, then they can bring the cost down for the treatment of the most prevalent diseases. For example, when carrying out the door-to-door campaigns, Coney Island Hospital will mainly focus on the immediate surrounding area and determine the most prevalent illnesses in that specific area in order to offer the best quality healthcare to those who cannot access the hospital. Coney Island Hospital will also consider the cost of their services and ensure that they remain at affordable levels that attract members of the community to seek their services. In order to measure the success of the program, the hospital will analyze their medical history of treatments and compare with the records available before and after the initiation of the program. Keeping of full and detailed medical records will enable the hospital to not only understand the success of the program but also assist the doctors in evaluating the medical needs of Coney Island residents. Conclusion Provision of health facilities is an important social service in any community and governments invest heavily in health programs to ensure that the citizens receive the best quality health care. Public health campaigns must be conducted regularly to ensure that all members of the community including those who lack frequent access to hospitals receive regular healthcare services. While carrying out such public health campaigns, the involved organizations especially the local hospitals should devise the methods that will ensure that every member of the community is accorded the opportunity to receive the services. Local hospitals should however appreciate the financial constraints that might be experienced and should therefore seek outside funding whenever necessary. Moreover, it is imperative for doctors to regularly evaluate records of past cases’ diagnoses, treatment and recovery rate. They should sit together or have the board review their own as well as colleagues cases so as to measure the success of the program and come up with more effective methods of carrying out more effective public health campaign in the future. References Barnes, M. P., & Radermacher, H. (2003). Community rehabilitation in neurology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Brookmeyer, R., & Stroup, D. F. (2003). Monitoring the health of populations: Statistical principles and methods for public health surveillance. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Cole, L. A., & Connell, N. D. (2012). Local planning for terror and disaster: From bioterrorism to earthquakes. New Jersey, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Gupta, S. (2004). Marketing research. New Delhi: Excel Books India. Miller, L., & Zawistowski, S. (2012). Shelter medicine for veterinarians and staff. Arnes, AI: Wiley. Ottoson, J. M., & Green, L. W. (2005). 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