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Hello,
I am totally confused, as I have read so much. I cannot figure out what precisely to put in the following:
1) Itemized Description of proposed my program.
2) Itemized Description of proposed pilot study (what is this?)
3) Itemized Description of proposed evaluation of the pilot study including a tool (Six Sigma, TQM) to improve the proposed piloted process
4) Itemized Description of what other health care organizations and/or NGOs have done to address my initiative.

I am following the Promoting Healthy Living and Preventing Chronic Disease An Action Planning Guide for Communities
A publication of the KU Work Group for Community Health and Development The University of Kansas
http://communityhealth.ku.edu/

Can you please provide examples where I can see precisely what to put in these documents. I have gathered all the data there is. I have my goal, vision, mission statement, strategies, and action plans, which are all evidence-based, that concern:
1. physical activity,
2. healthy eating,
3. tobacco use, and
4. access to care and preventive services.

I know my 5 strategies are:
1. providing information and enhancing skills
2. modifying access, barriers, and opportunities
3. enhancing services and support
4. changing the consequences (incentives)
5. modifying policies and broader conditions

My framework for Promoting Healthy Living is the IOM (2003):
1. Assessment & Collaborative Planning
2. Targeted Action & Intervention
3. Community & System Change
4. Widespread Behavior Change
5. Improvement in Population level Outcomes

I have planned for new or modified programs, policies, and practices in the strategies. I do not know what section (e.g., description of proposed program, pilot study, evaluation of pilot study) I need to put this in.

However, I have not been able to meet with anybody in town - I have only had 8 days to look this up. I do know from talking to people on the phone that my county in Arkansas has very little active coalitions due to budget cuts and losing funding.

I am not getting a grant or implementing social marketing. My teacher knows that I have not met with anyone - I cannot give details of meetings.

My initiative deals with Pope County's community sectors of the: business community, health organizations, school district, and broader community.

My teacher does not want us to give her a detailed logic model.
Plus this can only be 5-7 pages long. APA 6th edition, doubled spaced, with citations. The reference page can be page 8+. I am totally vexed.

Can you please help. I have done all the work. I cannot find examples anywhere on line except for CHNAs that have not-for-profit hospitals doing community needs assessments. Yes, I am bringing the hospital in as a potential collaborator, but I am to act as if there is no coalitions, or action taking place. Plus, no one in the community seems to want to help with the severe problem of CVD, cancer, diabetes, tobacco use, etc....I know what are my modified risks. I know what are my key drivers. I know what are my vulnerable populations.

I just do not know what to place in what sections.
Can you please help?
Thank you ,
Tracey K. Carr
Answer:

Hi Tracey,
I'll dispense with the usual introductory pleasantries because you're on a deadline (welcome to Ask an Advisor by the way). Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. From what I read, it looks like you've got many of the required elements already so you're in pretty good shape with this assignment (or exercise as the case may be) so don't panic, take a deep breath, you've got this. Let's take them one at a time; they're in the correct sequence as you see them so all you need do is address each one in turn. Because you have limited space (5-7 pages of narrative, double-spaced is not much, plus one page for references) you have to be brief, maybe a page and a half per section plus references (why your professor chose the word "itemized" is beyond me; if I had to hazard a guess I would say that "itemized" means be brief by itemizing the information you present - to me that means list where possible). If you have an APA manual (6th edition) handy that will help you immensely with formatting, formatting your references, etc.
 
1) Itemized Description of proposed my program (done and done as far as I can tell, now just put it into more descriptive form)
 
My framework for Promoting Healthy Living is the IOM (2003):
1. Assessment & Collaborative Planning
2. Targeted Action & Intervention
3. Community & System Change
4. Widespread Behavior Change
5. Improvement in Population level Outcomes
 
I have my goal, vision, mission statement, strategies, and action plans, which are all evidence-based, that concern:
1. physical activity,
2. healthy eating,
3. tobacco use, and
4. access to care and preventive services.
 
2) Itemized Description of proposed pilot study (what is this?): What your professor means is to discuss how you are actually going to implement your proposed program - done, now write it up descriptively, but briefly...
 
I know my 5 strategies are:
1. providing information and enhancing skills
2. modifying access, barriers, and opportunities
3. enhancing services and support
4. changing the consequences (incentives)
5. modifying policies and broader conditions
 
3) Itemized Description of proposed evaluation of the pilot study (it's not a pilot study, it's a pilot project) including a tool (Six Sigma, TQM) to improve the proposed piloted process: This one requires a little more finesse and it's hard for me to give you the best advice because I don't know how much experience or knowledge you have regarding evaluation and the use of quality-management tools. Basically, you're going to evaluate the process (what you did) and outcomes (how the program impacted your target populations) of your pilot program and then use the results to inform the implementation of a quality-management tool to determine how you might improve (the operative word with any kind of quality-management tool is improve) the pilot program before you implement it on a wide-scale; honestly, if the program is a dud, you don't want to roll it out before it actually works as intended. The evaluation aspect puts the pilot program under a microscope of sorts to determine what worked well and what didn't work well, and the quality-management tool will inform what needs to be done to make it the best program it can be.
 
Here are resources within the Community Tool Box that will inform your thinking about this aspect of this exercise: go to the "Learn a Skill, how-to information" button in the top left corner of the home page, click on Table of Contents, and scroll down to the section entitled: Evaluating Community Programs and Initiatives -Information on developing a plan for evaluation, evaluation methods, and using evaluation to understand and improve the initiative." See Chapter 36. Introduction to Evaluation, Chapter 37. Operations in Evaluating Community Interventions, Chapter 38. Some Methods for Evaluating Comprehensive Community Initiatives, Chapter 39. Using Evaluation to Understand and Improve the Initiative, and toolkit 12. Evaluating the Initiative. Again, you don't have a lot of room for this so look at Chapter 38 in particular. You can also follow this thread: Home » Help Taking Action » Troubleshooting Guide >> 10. We don't know how to evaluate our program or initiative and 11. There is not enough improvement in outcomes.
 
4) Itemized Description of what other health care organizations and/or NGOs have done to address my initiative: Okay, this is fairly easy, but will require a little sleuthing work on your part (you can use Google Scholar or your library's on-line database search engines such as PsychInfo, Web of Science, etc.). Basically, you designed a program to solve particular community health problems, correct? Okay, well you aren't alone out there designing programs to solve community health problems, nope, many other organizations have come before you that used a similar approach to tackle similar problems, you just need to find out who they are and what they did (hence why I said you need to do a little sleuthing work). Now, if you click on the "Connect, link with others" button at the top of our home page and then click on "Community Stories" that will get you started, and hopefully you'll find a similar initiative to the one you've designed.
 
Okay Tracey, again, you've got this so do not panic. For you, the issue was not so much that you don't have the information because you do, it's more a matter of trying to translate what your professor actually meant by "index," "pilot study," etc; hopefully we were able to clarify. I really, really hope this helps you out. It's not a long assignment so you have to be brief, you can't pack everything you have into a 5 - 7 page, double-spaced document; just hit the highlights and keep on moving. With that, thank you for coming to us, sorry for the delay. Next time you have an assignment for this class or any other class that involves community-based initiatives, come to us first, that's what we're here for and we want you to be successful in your endeavors!
 
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Question Date: mar, 04/26/2016