What is MAP-IT?
___MAP-IT is a framework that can be used to plan and evaluate public health interventions in a community.
___MAP-IT has five steps:
- Mobilize individuals and organizations that care about the health of your community into a coalition.
- Assess the areas of greatest need in your community, as well as the resources and other strengths that you can tap into to address those areas.
- Plan your approach: start with a vision of where you want to be as a community; then add strategies and action steps to help you achieve that vision.
- Implement your plan using concrete action steps that can be monitored and will make a difference.
- Track your progress over time.
Why use MAP-IT?
___It involves all stakeholders, making for a widely-supported and community-owned effort.
___It assesses assets as well as needs, and looks for ways to use them.
___Assessment means that the effort will start from the reality of the community, rather than from some preconceived idea of what’s necessary or what resources are available.
___It produces a comprehensive and specific plan, with reasonable timelines, assigned responsibility, clear objectives, and well-defined action steps related to an overall strategy.
___It incorporates evaluation from the beginning, allowing adjustment when necessary.
How do you use MAP-IT?
Mobilize
___Consider what you want coalition partners to do and how the coalition might be organized.
___Brainstorm potential partners.
___Recruit coalition members.
___Create a vision for the coalition.
Assess
___Collect locally available data about resources and needs.
___Collect information from public and archival sources.
___Determine what issues are most important to community residents and key stakeholders.
___Identify community assets, including people, skills, capacity and capacity building, space, organizations and institutions, knowledge, funds, etc.
___Based on data and community priorities, prioritize needs by consensus.
___Establish baseline data
Plan
___Choose the issue(s) the initiative will work on.
___Set clear objectives.
___For each objective, develop an action plan that includes:
- A strategy and tactics
- A timeline with reasonable time targets for each phase of the strategy
- The responsible parties and their roles and tasks
- Indicators and/or other measures of progress
Implement
___Identify an individual or organization to serve as the coordinating point for the implementation of the initiative.
___Make sure that everyone involved knows what’s going on and what everyone else is doing.
___Use the media and other channels to inform the community about the work of the initiative.
Track
___Start your evaluation and monitoring at the very beginning of your initiative, if possible.
___Set up a system for gathering data.
___Consider:
- Data Quality
- Limitations of self-reported data
- Data validity and reliability
- Data availability
___Organize and analyze data on a regular basis, so that you can make appropriate adjustments in your work as time goes on.
___Share progress and successes with the community.