The importance of programming tools in health promotion program planning
The aim of a health promotion program is to make a targeted group of people aware of some ongoing health issues aiming to prevent the consequences by changing the people’s perspectives by promoting policies, regulations and others. On the other hand, to build up an effective health promotion program, the planning phase has to be organized with in depth logical model, information integrity and tangibility. In this paper, the chosen health promotional program is ‘Preventing the Use of Tobacco Among Young People’. This paper describes the use of programming tools namely Logic Model, Budget and Timeline to plan this health promotion program successfully. The goals of this health promotional program have been descried along with the explanation of utilizing the programming tools in planning phase of the program. With the help of logical model template, budget and timeline template the planning of the chosen program has been conducted.
Logic Model
The goal of this particular program is to make the youth aware of the consequence of using tobacco on their body and healthy lifestyle and how t prevent this practice to spray in their regular lifestyle. The target population of this program is mainly the young people and the adolescents who are more likely to get addicted to smocking and other types of tobacco use (Fertman & Allensworth, 2017). The initial aim of this program is making the young people aware of the destructive outcomes of using tobacco where the ultimate aim is to reduce the rate of tobacco use in the next generation who are the future of the nation and civilization. The aims of this program are Decreasing the mortality and fatality rate caused by Tobacco usage and Decreased mortality and fatality rate caused by Tobacco usage and reducing associated health problems due to smoking throughout the nation.
The following logic model will help to understand the operational flow and task processing of the chosen program through graphical representation.
Inputs |
|
Activities |
|
Outcomes |
|
Goals |
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Short Term Outcomes |
Immediate Outcomes |
|
Long Term Outcomes |
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Capital Equipment Manpower Supplies Partnership Technology Space |
Social media and Online based promotional activities |
Boosted online awareness to regulate Tobacco advertisement |
Reduced rate of smocking is youth population Self motivated promotions and programs in several communities against Tobacco use |
Improved health condition of Youth community with an elevated lifestyle Reduced tendency of using tobacco in young age in a tobacco free environment |
Decreased mortality and fatality rate caused by Tobacco usage Reduced associated health problems of smoking |
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Educational institution based workshops and trainings |
Changes in perception, knowledge, skills and attitudes |
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Enforcement of Legislations, Policies, Acts, regulations for restricting the sale of Tobacco products |
Boundaries in accessibility of Tobacco use in communities |
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Community based activities and partnerships to support the agendas |
Enhance acceptance of anti tobacco agendas and programs is various communities |
Logic model represents the work flow diagram of a program where the inputs, outputs, outcomes, goals are represented within an interconnected diagram. The basic concept of a logic model is representing the strategic execution phases and systematic objective plan. For this promotional program of ‘Preventing the Use of Tobacco among Young People’, the major inputs are Capital, Equipment, Manpower, Supplies, Partnership, Technology and Space (.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2011).
Here the word Input represents the basic inbounds requirement to design and develop the project plan along with to execute the final model. The second section is activities where the processes of executions are described through individual blocks (Krisberg, 2012). For this program, 4 types of activities have been planned from online-offline promotion to community support and partnership. The Short term outcomes represents the most initial possible outcomes of these activities and the long term outcomes are the estimated outcomes of prolonged period. However, the initial outcomes are the secondary estimated outcomes just after the execution of the promotional program. In final section, the goals of this project are presented. These goals are the aims or purposes of this project presented through the wider aspects (De Montis, 2013). Therefore, it has been found that through the step by step representation of regulatory concepts and framework, within the logic model of the program planning, the development of the procedure becomes easier to handle.
The three programming tools needed for efficient program planning and implementation
Budget
Description |
Last Annual Budget (USD) |
Estimated Expenses (USD) |
Actual Differences (USD) |
Percentage of Difference (%) |
Meetings and Decision making |
300000 |
300000 |
0 |
0 |
Payroll for non volunteers |
700000 |
800000 |
100000 |
12 |
Materials and food supply |
500000 |
600000 |
100000 |
17% |
100000 |
200000 |
100000 |
50% |
|
Printed promotions |
400000 |
500000 |
100000 |
20% |
Transport and logistics |
100000 |
200000 |
100000 |
50% |
Feedback and evaluation |
200000 |
200000 |
0 |
0 |
Other additional expenses |
100000 |
200000 |
100000 |
50% |
Total |
3000000 |
|
|
Budget is one of the crucial parts of any program planning ranging from business promotion, marketing, developing, project planning to event planning, tourism and other systematic commercial or noncommercial activities. In more simple words, budget is a rough estimation of expenditure in future where the estimators analyze the existing price of required resources and possible expenditure (Cook County Bureau of Health Services, 2012). During the process of developing budget all regulatory stakeholders should be aware of the monetary estimation. During the execution of the plan, the operating attributes need to use the total capital as per the estimation of expenditure in preplanned budget. While making the budget the expanse of previous activities must be considered for most realistic estimation of the future expense (Posavac, 2015).
The differences are calculated to measure the percentage of changes between the expenditures of previous similar operation and the estimated expanse according to the market price. In this scenario in order to generate the realistic budget for the program named ‘Preventing the Use of Tobacco among Young People’, the budget has considered the expenses of Meetings and Decision making , Payroll or remuneration for non volunteers, Materials and food supply cost. The cost for Online promotional activity, Printed promotions, Transport and logistics, Feedback and evaluation and the other additional expenses are also considered (Issel & Wells, 2017). According to the budget plan the budget for this health promotional program is 3000,000 USD.
Timeline
Activity |
Start date |
Duration (days) |
Communicating with stakeholders |
13-Jul |
20 |
Decision making |
20-Jul |
10 |
Planning and development |
05-Aug |
30 |
Hire and train staff |
15-Aug |
20 |
Online promotion |
20-Aug |
30 |
Printed promotion |
25-Aug |
30 |
Initialize workshops |
30-Aug |
20 |
15-Sep |
90 |
|
Evaluation and Feedback |
28-Nov |
30 |
Final report |
20-Dec |
15 |
Time line is one of the most valuable tools of program planning which allows to estimate the required time for each major as well as minor regulatory operation. While the budget represents the estimation of potential expenditure for the project, the timeline represent the required time to execute various operations to execute the program successfully (Castañeda-Orjuela et al., 2013). The major attributes of the timeline are the regulatory activities, the starting date and the required estimated duration. The aim of this program named ‘Preventing the Use of Tobacco among Young People’, should be maintaining the estimated time consumption with punctuation throughout the activities (Eldredge et al. 2016). The major regulatory time consuming activities for this program are Communicating with stakeholders Decision making, Planning and development, Hiring and train staff, Online proportioning, Printed promotion, Initializing workshops, Executing planned programs, Evaluation and collecting feedback and finally developing the documentation of Final report (Newcomer, Hatry & Wholey, 2015). Throughout the program the most time consuming activity will be execution of the program which will be taking more than 3 months time to execute. Gantt chart is a graphical representation of the timeline planned earlier. The vertical axis represents the activities and the horizontal axis represents the time periods.
Case studies of using timelines and budgets for program planning and implementation
Conclusion
From the above analysis, it can be said that the aim of this health promotion program is to make a targeted group of people aware of the ongoing health issues regarding tobacco use, aiming to prevent the consequences by changing the people’s perspectives by promoting policies, regulations and others. This paper has described the use of programming tools namely Logic Model, Budget and Timeline to plan this health promotion program successfully. With this regards, the initial aim of this program is making the young people aware of the destructive outcomes of using tobacco. The basic concept of a logic model used for the planning of this program named ‘Preventing the Use of Tobacco among Young People’ is representing the strategic execution phases and systematic objective plan. On the other hand, words, the budget represented the rough estimations of expenditure in future where the estimators analyze the existing price of required resources and possible expenditure. From the discussion it has been noticed that, while the budget represents the estimation of potential expenditure for the project, the timeline represent the required time to execute various operations to execute the program successfully.
References
Castañeda-Orjuela, C., Romero, M., Arce, P., Resch, S., Janusz, C. B., Toscano, C. M., & De la Hoz-Restrepo, F. (2013). Using standardized tools to improve immunization costing data for program planning: the cost of the Colombian expanded program on immunization. Vaccine, 31, C72-C79.
Cook County Bureau of Health Services. (2012). Sample grant budget: Year 01.
De Montis, A. (2013). Implementing Strategic Environmental Assessment of spatial planning tools: A study on the Italian provinces. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 41, 53-63.
Eldredge, L. K. B., Markham, C. M., Ruiter, R. A., Kok, G., & Parcel, G. S. (2016). Planning health promotion programs: an intervention mapping approach. John Wiley & Sons.
Fertman, C. I., & Allensworth, D. D. (Eds.). (2017). Health promotion programs: From theory to practice (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Issel, L. M., & Wells, R. (2017). Health program planning and evaluation. Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Krisberg, K. (2012). Budget cuts straining capacity of public health departments: Services in demand.
Marquez, J. J., Pyrzak, G., Hashemi, S., McMillin, K., & Medwid, J. (2013). Supporting real-time operations and execution through timeline and scheduling aids. In 43rd International Conference on Environmental Systems (p. 3519).
Newcomer, K. E., Hatry, H. P., & Wholey, J. S. (2015). Handbook of practical program evaluation. John Wiley & Sons.
Posavac, E. J. (2015). Program evaluation: Methods and case studies. Routledge.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services., (2011). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Evaluation guide: Developing and using a logic model