Leadership And Strategy Plan For Heart Disease And Stroke Prevention

Strategic Plan

The aim of the paper is to prepare  leadership and strategy plan on a component of Healthy People 2020  under the leadership of the executive director, Lake Troubled Shallows Health Department. The chosen component for the study is heart disease and stroke prevention. The rationale behind selecting heart diseases and stroke prevention are the increasing prevalence of the diseases and the devastating impact on the community. The American Health Rankings show that though the rate of deaths due to cardiovascular diseases in the US has fallen. However, that percentage is more than a hundred and fifty in a lakh people (americashealthrankings.org, 2017). The figure is still very alarming and needs prompt attention from the government. It is this alarming rate of cardiovascular diseases in the US, which makes initiating a health to raise awareness about cardiac health and strokes.

State the idea/issue you are assessing: Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of Healthy People 2020 by Lake Troubled Shallows Health Department. Chosen component: heart diseases and stroke prevention.

Identify Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) for your CoP. The presence of weaknesses and threats are gaps to be addressed in planning, while the absence of strengths or opportunities clarifies the need for further planning or development before action is taken.

Weakness 1: High importance of government bodies may impede decision-making and dynamism.

Weakness 2: Government officials often interfere in the programmes which creates conflicts with the stakeholders.

Counteracting opportunities: The involvement of a variety of stakeholders like governments, corporate organisations including pharmaceutical companies, suppliers, medical practitioners and patients can contribute towards making the cardiac health development programmes like Healthy People 2020 more successful. The presence of many stakeholders like patients, doctors and pharmaceutical experts can result in smooth and more transparent communication between them. This may lead to innovation and improvement in the practice in the area of cardiac treatment. The government in advanced countries like the United States have evolved into facilitators of public development programmes like Healthy People 2020 (Schoen et al., 2014). Thus, though the presence of government as one of the important participants in the health programmes apparently seem to impede dynamic decision making, government today provides platforms for these health programmes and encourages them.  

Weakness 3: Change of ruling parties endangers such health programmes.

Counteracting opportunity:  The government of the United States of America is extremely stable and every political party forming government maintain public health improvement initiatives as their priority agenda. This ensures the health programmes like Healthy People 2020 continue to benefit people suffering from cardiac ailments.

SWOT Analysis (Internal)

Threat 1: Involvement of many stakeholders results in conflict of interests.

Threat 2: Negative changes in the lifestyle trends among the people like inclinations towards consumption of alcohol and junk food threatens the success of health care programmes.

Counteracting opportunity: The health programmes like Healthy People 2020 often leads to collaboration of stakeholders like governments, suppliers, corporate organisations, medical experts and patients. This can counteract both the threats stated above. First, these large numbers of stakeholders can collaborate and exchange their knowledge. This leads to open innovation and leads to discovery of more effective cardiac medicines and treatment procedures. Moreover, the doctors can speak to the patients and create awareness about the importance of leading healthy lifestyle for healthy heart (Lovallo et al., 2016). Thus, the health programmes can generate awareness among the common people and the society in generation against consumption of alcohol and junk food. Thus, health programmes can lead to open innovation and generation of awareness among people to lead a healthy life.

The Lake Troubled Shallows Health Department can adopt the following strategies to enhance or leverage the strengths of the cardiac health development programmes:

1. The body can acquire advanced cardiac treatment facilities to treat the cardiac patients at the health programmes camps. It can be assumed that the health body is financially very strong and has knowledge about the market conditions like the standard of technology available with Minnesota. Thus, it can acquire advanced technological cardiac treatment and diagnostic instruments and use them during the health programme. This would allow patients to get tested at the campaigns like the doctors can take record of the alcohol content or the tobacco content. The doctors can make the patients aware about their health conditions and more specifically about their hearts (Attwood & Munafò, 2014). This would enhance awareness among people about their health and they would change their lifestyle to be healthier.
2. The health programme must involve the leading pharmaceutical companies of the states namely Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson. It can be assumed that these companies would participate in these programmes to show their social responsiveness. It can be assumed that the importance of the Lake Troubled Shallows Health Department in the programme would attract these multinational companies to be involved in these programmes (Andréasson et al., 2014).

The Lake Troubled Shallows Health Department can take the following strategies to minimise the weakness:

1. The body can ensure active involvement of the stakeholder groups like governments, corporate houses including pharmaceutical companies, suppliers and patients by encouraging smooth exchange of information between them. The department can facilitate communication among these stakeholders using emails, social media websites like Facebook and physical face-to-face meetings at the camps. These would help the stakeholders understand each other and reduce chances of conflict among them (Ventola, 2014).
2. The Federal Court can make these health programmes mandatory for the governments. This would ensure continuity of these activities to help the cardiac patients lead healthy lives and public trust in the governments (George et al., 2014).

The Lake Troubled Shallows Health Department can take the following advantages of its opportunities to strengthen the cardiac health improvement and stroke minimisation campaign:

1. The government of the United States of America has strong ties with both developed markets like the United Kingdom and the emerging markets like India and China. These countries have large numbers of pharmaceutical companies, international chains of hospitals and expert medical practitioners. They also experience several path-breaking discoveries in the field of medical science, cardiology in particular.   The Lake Troubled Shallows Health Department can invite these countries to participate in the health programmes. This would lead to more collaboration of medical bodies of various countries, which would encourage higher level of innovation and lead to the success of these events (Robinson et al., 2013).
2. The Lake Troubled Shallows Health Department must encourage the people from all status, class, income and backgrounds to participate in the programmes. This would make them more successful and ensure development of cardiac health among communities across the US.

The following are the potential threats to the success of the cardiac health development programmes   under the leadership of the Lake Troubled Shallows Health Department:

1. The involvement of large numbers of suppliers leaves scope of suppliers selling counterfeit cardiac medicines get access to the consumer base. The government can address this threat by checking the business records of the business firms and the pharmaceutical companies before allowing them to participate in the health programme (Ioannidis et al., 2014).
2.    The   involvement of large number of stakeholders and exchange of a large amount of data between them makes it difficult for the government monitor the communication between them. This exposes the system to data fraud and data theft. This threat can be addressed by creating a formal communication channel which these stakeholders can sue to exchange information amongst themselves (Bakker, Maat & van Wee, 2014).

The following are the potential strategic issues the Lake Troubled Shallows Health Department need to address:

1. The body has to ensure that the health programme is free from political intervention and corruption. It must ensure that the cardiac development health programme, Healthy People 2020 is directed towards creating awareness among the people about the importance of having healthy heart conditions and how to avoid strokes and premature death. The top health department official must ensure that the political leaders do not use the programme as platform to promote their political agenda (De Schepper, Dooms & Haezendonck, 2014).
2. The government body has to ensure that the Healthy People 2020 proves to be advantageous for all business organisations participating in it. The body must ensure that the local small and medium scale organisations like pathological laboratories also get to interact with customers and expand their consumer base.

Healthy People 2020 was held under the leadership of the Lake Troubled Shallows Health Department which was the key stakeholder and set the agenda for the programme. The programme drew participation of several types of stakeholders (Eldredge et al., 2016). The public in general participated according to the guidelines and interventions of the health departments. There corporate organisations especially the multinational pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and J&J participated in the programme and interacted with the patients (Frieden, 2014). The local pathological laboratories took part in the programme and offered the visitors to have their blood and hearts tested at discounted prices. The health department and the pharmaceutical companies interacted with the public to with create awareness of taking care of their hearts. The financial companies like the banks and insurance companies also participated in the programme. They interacted with the public about the importance of life insurance and offered life insurance products to the interested people. The health department maintained a strict control over the programme to avoid conflicts among these stakeholders (Issel & Wells, 2017).

Strengths

The following is the plan of a hypothetical   health programme, which the Lake Troubled Shallows Health Department can undertake. The plan would be addressed to the executive director, the Lake Troubled Shallows Health Department and would last for tenure of three months.

Week 1: The Lake Troubled Shallows Health Department meeting stakeholders:

The representatives of the Lake Troubled Shallows Health Department would hold preliminary meeting with the stakeholders like corporate participants, the suppliers and the public. The participation of these large numbers of stakeholders would require the government representative to allot days to these different stakeholders like they would speak to the public on Monday, corporate bodies on Tuesday and only pharmaceutical companies on Wednesday. The government representative would lay down the aim of the programme which meeting the needs to stop or at least minimise the cardiac problems and strokes in the society in America. They would also lay down the rules for the stakeholders like exchange of accurate information and abstain from using fraudulent and unethical methods. The representatives would most importantly inform the stakeholders that they reserve the right to intervene in the programme if their guiding principles, mission and vision are breached or endangered by any unethical or unacceptable conduct of the stakeholders.

Week 2: Corporate meeting the public:

The second week would comprise the participating corporate organisations from all industries interacting with the public. The companies can be form diverse industries like automobile and food industries. For example, the food industry companies can promote how their products can help people to keep away or reduce heart problems. The automobile companies can promote how choosing renewable fuels can reduce environmental pollution and benefit the cardiac health of people.

Week 3: Pharmaceutical companies meeting people:

The third week would have pharmaceutical companies meeting the common people as its agenda. The pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and J&J would make people aware about the causes of heart ailments and ways to prevent stokes and cardiac arrests. They can point out the lifestyle factors, which may lead to cardiac problems like consumption of excess alcohol, smoking and consuming fast food in regular basis. They can also inform people the medicines, which they can take in case of an medical emergency. They can also speak to the public about the dangers of purchasing and consuming across the counter medicines at the pharmacist shop.

Week 4: Insurance companies speak to the public:

Weaknesses

The insurance companies can speak to the people on the significance of buying insurance packages. They can promote their insurance products and sell them to interested people.

The month can consist of people taking medical checkups and medical tests before the doctors and pathological laboratories respectively. They can avail the facilities like health advices, medicines and lifestyle counselling at the programme Healthy People 2020. The pathological departments and the medical practitioners should maintain the details of the people undergoing checkups and tests. They must maintain the outcome of the tests, checkups and submit the same of the health department.

 The third and the last month would comprise of measuring the outcome of the programme Healthy People 2020. The medical laboratories and the medical practitioners can encourage people to get themselves tested after a month. The outcome of these tests would indicate the rate of success of the programme. For example, the number of patients who were diagnosed with cardiac problems and blood sugar level would be tested. A decrease in the rate of cardiac problems or fall in high blood sugar among these people would show that the programme has succeeded in creating awareness about cardiac problems and their implications.

The SWOT analysis of the health programme Healthy People 2020 shows that the government support provides it a strong base to attract a large number of stakeholders like corporate organisations, suppliers and medical practitioners. The following are the five objectives of the programme:

1. To create awareness among the people regarding the importance of cardiac health to keep away strokes.
2. To maintain healthy lifestyle to ensure minimisation of chances of strokes.
3. To ensure meeting and collaboration of stakeholders like people, medical and corporate organisations.
4. To allow the pharmaceutical companies interact with the public to gain information about the changing demands of them, like more advanced medicines to fight more complex health problems.
5. To encourage open innovation among the stakeholders like suppliers, pharmaceutical companies and medical practitioners to bring about more permanent medical treatments for cardiac problems.

A SMART analysis of these objectives reveals the following facts:

Specific:

The objectives like reduction of cardiac problems among the people are specific. They consist of creating public awareness to minimise the occurrences of cardiac problem among the common people.

Measurable:

The incidences of cardiac problems are measurable by counting the numbers of people suffering from cardiac problems. Again, it can also be stated that the decrease in the cardiac ailment rates can be measured by testing the individuals tested before. Hence, this show the outcomes of the objectives are measurable.

Assignable:

The responsibilities of holding the programme can be assigned to specific departments and pathological laboratories. This shows that the objectives of the programme are assignable.

Realistic:

The objectives of the programme Healthy People 2020 are realistic. The objective of the programme is to create awareness among the people about cardiac problems and strokes. The objectives can be achieved by raising awareness about proper lifestyle and medication. Hence, it is realistic and feasible.

SWOT Analysis (External)

Time-bound:

The objective of creating awareness about cardiac health among the people is time bound and achievable within a specific time. For example, the second month may comprise of conducting initial tests of the people while the second month can comprise of conducting the tests again ensure the benefits of the medication on these people. Thus, it can be said that the objectives of programme are time-bound and can be achieved within a specific period.

According to Mendes, Plaza and Wallerstein (2016), the participation of various stakeholders is important for the success of the health programmes like Healthy People 2020. This shows that the appropriate leadership approach to execute programmes like health programmes is participative leadership style.  This leadership style encourages the team members to participate in the decision-making activities. The cardiac health awareness program named Healthy People 2020 requires the stakeholders like the health department, the pharmaceutical companies and public in general. The programme would be held by   the Lake Troubled Shallows Health Department. The body should follow participative leadership style to lead the different stakeholders and understand their needs. For example, the need of the patients is to get treatment and advices on cardiac ailments while the need of the companies is to market their products. Thus, by taking the participative leadership style approach, the government would understand the needs of all these stakeholders, which would earn it emotional intelligence. Moreover, this would allow it to understand the background of the people coming from diverse cultures, which would give it cultural competence. The government should use its leadership skills like communicating and coordinating with a large number of stakeholders to lead the programme. It must also use its analytical skills to understand the needs of these stakeholders.

The programme ‘Healthy People 2020 involves diverse groups of stakeholders like patients and companies, hence carry serious ethical issues. Ventola (2014) presents the first ethical implications of health programmes involving diverse stakeholders is transparency in communication. The involvement of diverse stakeholders like patients and companies result in exchange of large mass of information among themselves. They must ensure that they communicate accurate information.

Niemiec and Howard (2016) point out to the second ethical issue that the participants should follow, consent and confidentiality. The pathological laboratories and the companies must maintain complete confidentiality of the personal data of the patients and only publish their data only with their prior consent.

The third ethical challenge is misrepresentation and coercion. Andrews (2016) points out those companies must not coerce their clients and customers. The companies participating in the programme should not misrepresent products to the customers   or coerce them to consume their products like insurance products.

Opportunities

The community partners like the society would be involved in Healthy People 2020 programme.  The Lake Troubled Shallows Health Department is the leader and the key stakeholder of the event. The other key stakeholders consist of financial institutions like the banks financing the event. The important stakeholders of the health programme are the companies including pharmaceutical companies, the suppliers of medicines, medical practitioners like doctors and pathological laboratories. The primary stakeholders comprise of public in general especially the people suffering from cardiac ailments.

The following are the funding issues Healthy People 2020 faces:

1. The first financial issue health programmes suffer from are shortage of finances. This shortage of finance can be both and short term. However, the shortage of funds demand urgent actions from the government bodies and the institutions financing the project. This is because shortage of funds may result in premature closing of the health programme which would impact the primary stakeholders, the cardiac patients. The government can employ a Acquisition officerwhose role would be ensuring adequate funds to the health programmes.  He would responsible for supervising the amount of available funds and the future needs of funds. He would then submit a report to the government body regarding this fund requirement and maintain communication with banks under special permission of the health department. He would draw a monthly salary of $2000.
2. The second funding issues facing big health awareness programmes like, Healthy People 2020 is allocation of funds. This is a short-term issue but needs to be dealt with on urgent basis. These health programmes, as discussed involved diverse categories of stakeholders. Hence,   a delay in allocation of funds would influence all the stakeholders and impede advancement of the health programme. The government body can employ an allocation officerwhose role would be allocation of funds among the stakeholders. He should be responsible towards coordinating with the acquisition officer and inform him about requirements of funds. He would receive a monthly salary of $ 1000.

Notes:

1. The initial start of up funds has been taken as the only revenue in the budget.
2. It has been assumed that the corporate organisations have donated $ 100000 towards the health programme in the first year.
3. The other expenditures have been taken arbitrarily.

1. The fundings from the central government and state governments are important sources of funds. The state funds are secure sources of funds, which have positive   impact in the decision making of the organisations participating in the health programmes. The government fundings provides security to the health programmes.
2. The first potential funding source that can be recommended is the donations from public companies and non-profit associations who participate in the health programme. The government can the US can direct the multinational companies like Pfizer and non-profit associations to invest in the health programmes due to their huge financial resources. The government of the US or the states can then give subsidy to these companies on the export or import expenditures.
3. The rich people from the local communities can also be asked to provide financial donations to help the health programmes. They can in return get rebates on their individual income taxes for the current financial year.

The following are the specific and measurable objectives which The Lake Troubled Shallows Health Department would seek to achieve in a years’ time:

1. Create awareness among the people regarding the importance of maintaining cardiac health to keep away strokes and other fatal medical consequences.
2. Create awareness among people to maintain healthy life style in order to maintain cardiac health.
3. To raise awareness among people to under regular medical checkups like blood tests and ECG.
4. To make people aware of the need and benefits of maintaining healthy habits like not consuming products of tobacco.
5. To make people aware about benefits of working out to maintain proper health and control high blood sugar on regular basis.

The numbers of people benefitted from the cardiac programmes are measurable. Comparing the number of people suffering from cardiac problems at the start of the programme and the number of people suffering from the problem would show the number of people benefitted by the programme. The data about cardiac patients can also be obtained from the publications like America’s Health Rankings (americashealthrankings.org, 2017).

References:

America’s Health Rankings | AHR. (2017). America’s Health Rankings. Retrieved 31 October 2017, from https://www.americashealthrankings.org/

Andréasson, S., Chikritzhs, T., Dangardt, F., Holder, H., Naimi, T., & Stockwell, T. (2014). Evidence about health effects of “moderate” alcohol consumption.

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Threats

Frieden, T. R. (2014). Six components necessary for effective public health program implementation. American journal of public health, 104(1), 17-22.

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Lovallo, W. R., Enoch, M. A., Acheson, A., Cohoon, A. J., Sorocco, K. H., Hodgkinson, C. A., … & Goldman, D. (2016). Early-life adversity interacts with FKBP5 genotypes: altered working memory and cardiac stress reactivity in the Oklahoma family health patterns project. Neuropsychopharmacology, 41(7), 1724-1732.

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Niemiec, E., & Howard, H. C. (2016). Ethical issues in consumer genome sequencing: use of consumers’ samples and data. Applied & translational genomics, 8, 23-30.

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Ventola, C. L. (2014). Social media and health care professionals: benefits, risks, and best practices. Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 39(7), 491.

Ventola, C. L. (2014). Social media and health care professionals: benefits, risks, and best practices. Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 39(7), 491.

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Wuest, J., Merritt?Gray, M., Dubé, N., Hodgins, M. J., Malcolm, J., Majerovich, J. A., … & Varcoe, C. (2015). The process, outcomes, and challenges of feasibility studies conducted in partnership with stakeholders: a health intervention for women survivors of intimate partner violence. Research in nursing & health, 38(1), 82-96.

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