Health Promotion Programs: Determinants, Barriers, And Planning Essay.

Discuss about the Health Program Planning And Implementation.

Health is all about free from diseases; it includes healthy body as well as healthy mind, healthy body and healthy mind depicts the well-functioning of both. Health promotion plays a very crucial role in making population aware about various health problems. There are various determinants of health across the world these are, policies of the particular country, social factors, and health services provided, behaviour of individual, biological factors and genetics, all these determinants have impact on public health. Health programs across the world ameliorate the public health through recognizing and addressing the issues.

Corroborate the community action

An effective health promotion program can be achieved through the better planning, decision making, and implementation of strategies (Northern Healthy community partnership, 2013).

Through creation of supportive environment

Creation of healthy, safe and nurturing environment plays vital role in generating the positive desire in public towards health promotion programs. Dynamic pattern of life has significant effect on the heath of people. So, amicable environment should be there, to achieve the success in health promotion programs (NCBI, 2011).

Healthy public policy

Effective and healthy policies require the identification of hurdles in the acceptance of policies in health and non-health sectors. The objective of making healthy policy is to make the adoption of policies the easier choice.

Developing personal skills

Health promotion programs support the development and enhance the various skills in public like, education, life skills and many more.

There are different barriers in health promotion programs; in rural communities of the world and these barriers have impact on health promotion programs. Some of the barriers are given below.

Huge poverty rate, cultural and social beliefs, lower literacy rates, language barriers, unemployment,  barrier of conveyance , lack of resources and many more, all these factors are the biggest hindrance in the public health promotion programs (Department of health and human services, 2018).

Health promotion programs are the tools, which make the public aware about various health issues, on the other hand various hindrances are also there to become the obstacle in success of these health programs. So proper policy formulation and their implementation break out all the hurdles and led to the success of the program (Centre for disease control and prevention, 2014)

Planning and implementation of health plans in an effective manner is a very tough task, naturally organizations have to encounter with the numerous issues of public, population and the settings (Healthy people. Gov., 2010). All of these are the foundation of an effective plan, explained below:

Determinants of Health

Issues are the health problems some of the examples are, tobacco consumption, obesity, disability and many more. Recognition of health issues plays a very important role in setting the objectives for health promotion program. Health promotion programs are depending on the health issues. Prior knowledge of issues is required for formulating the strategies for better implementation of health promotion program, and issues are the foremost cornerstone of promotional program; on which whole of the program is depend.

People can be explained as the target group for the promotion of health programs. People comprise of children, women, men, adults, adolescent and many more. The choice of particular type of group attracts strategies accordingly (Canada.in, 2013). Along with the choice of target group, determinants of health problems are very crucial to be find out in particular area. So the choice of target group is very important to plan a promotional activity.e.g. If health department wants to aware the public about tobacco consumption, so choice of people or target group is very important here, male segment of the society will be the target group for this health promotion program (Astho, 2018).

There are various settings where people conduct their activities; these are home, locality, state, region, schools, offices any more places. Settings play very crucial role in influencing the population of particular target group, e.g. Spreading of awareness among children can be better achieved through the promotion of health programs in schools, developing good eating habits among children can be promoted through the collective setting in schools, day nurseries.

Population, their issues, and the locality where they live are needed to be properly identified before going for health promotion program.

Assessment of needs is the process of identifying the health problems prevalent in the community, and also finds out the causes behind these problems. Assessment of needs ensure the successful implementation of health programs and ultimately results in improving the community health (NHS Health Scotland, 2018). Identifying the needs and problems provides the direction to the health promoters, also gives opportunity to the health systems and health departments. Health need assessment includes various health problems these are, TB, HIV, disability, malaria and many more diseases. Identification of these problems is very crucial in planning and implementation of health promotion programs. These can be collected through various methods given below:

Under this one can use existing data, depending on the information gathered by others (National academic press, 2018).

Recognizing Barriers to Health Promotion Programs

Through conducting interviews

Face to face interview with the each person is the better way of getting knowledge about various issues or health problems prevalent in the area.

By spending some days at the place can gives you real view of the situation prevailing in that area. E.g. if the health department wants to know about the TB patients in the particular area, so they have to thoroughly explore the area and collect information as much as possible within prescribed time limit.

There are various kinds of surveys used to assess the community, written surveys, oral surveys and many more.

All these methods give reliable information about the health problems, and help the promoters of the health promotional programs. Examples of health problems are obesity, HIV, TB, cancer, teen pregnancy, disability, mental problems, physical problems and many more. Importance of need assessment in proper planning and implementation of health promotion programs, are given below:

• It contributes to the program planning through proper collection of data on various health issues.
• It improves decision making, decision making is very crucial aspect, so its need authentic information before taking any decision.
• Ensure the implementation of plan appropriately.
• Need assessment is the base of promotion activity, if the health department is not aware about the health needs of the population, then this may results in failure of the programs, so proper need assessment should be there while planning for any promotion of health issue among public.

Obesity is rapidly increasing across the world, and rising towards an epidemic with harmful health effects. There are many determinants of obesity like, genetic factors, food consumption habits, physical activities, depression, anxiety and many more. Obesity is a problem that is arising from a complex life style of an individual. There are various countries where obesity becomes the serious problem like, Qatar, Kuwait, United States and many more (The telegraph, 2017). Taking United States in consideration following health promotion planning is done:

Management of planning process

This includes participation of public, timeliness, resources available, gathering of data, decision making. Decision making is all about to make the data available at time, and its interpretation also on time, that exhibits efficiency of the program. Planning also includes staff and clients proper way of activities to be conducted, budget (Public health Ontario, 2011).

Assessment of situation

This includes identification of situation, what makes situation better, what makes situation worse. Assessment of situation can be done through the use of various types of data, various sources of data, and then proper analysis should be done for decision making.

Identification of public interested, goals, outcomes

Goals provide overall direction for the program, public requires attention to achieve our goal, and objectives are the statements.

Identification of strategies and process

Strategies are formulated to achieve the objectives of the plan. Identification of various health issues helps in formulating strategies accordingly. It includes policies for development, education of health, communication. It includes identification of activities which include how to start, continue and stop.

Development of indicators

Indicators determine the extent to which process and outcomes will be met.

This is the last step; it includes reviewing of the contribution of the plan to meet its objective, evaluation of gaps, also check out whether strategies effectively contributed or not, what changes to be needed.

Planning of health promotion program includes the framework, through which promotion is done; it starts with “who” that is target groups (e.g. adolescents, women, and children), “where” that means target group, settings or area (e.g. schools, hospitals, offices), “how” that means strategies (e.g. mass media, personal education, school education). After analysing these cornerstones of health promotion programs, strategies are formulated to bring the proper implementation of the program, and bring the changes in the population towards addressed health issue of obesity in the United States. Strategies includes, making people of US aware through social media, newspaper, education, conducting programs at various places. Children are more prone to obesity, childhood age is most influential age, and so conducting promotion programs at schools, colleges will be better option to make children aware about the obesity. Doctors can proscribe children about bad eating habits, and prescribe them nutritious eating habits. But there are gaps also that hindered the way of promotion these are, budget available, social factors, training and education of the promotion staff and many more. So to achieve the success in health promotion program proper implementation should be there.

References

Astho. (2018). Public health. Retrieved from: https://www.astho.org/

Canada.in. (2013). Implementing the population health approach. Retrieved from: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/health-promotion/population-health/implementing-population-health-approach/implementing-population-health-approach.html

Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. (2014). Social determinants of health. Retrieved from: https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/socialdeterminants/definitions.html

Department of Health and Human Services. (2018). Determinants of health. Retrieved from: www.dhhs.tas.gov.au/wihpw/principles/determinants_of_health

Healthy people.gov. (2010). Planning of health promotion programs. Retrieved from: https://www.healthypeople.gov/

National academic press. (2018). The need for public health education in other programs and schools. Retrieved from: https://www.nap.edu/read/10542/chapter/8#144

NCBI. (2011). Understanding health and its determinants. Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK233009/

NHS Health Scotland. (2018). Carry out a need assessment. Retrieved from: https://www.healthscotland.scot/improve-policy-and-practice/carry-out-a-needs-assessment

Northern Healthy Community Partnership. (2013). Health promotion strategies. Retrieved from: https://nhcp.ca/health_promotion/health_promotion_basics/health_promotion_strategies.html

Public health Ontario. (2011). The six steps for planning a health promotion program. Retrieved from: https://www.publichealthontario.ca/.../Six_steps_planning_health_promotion_progra...

The telegraph. (2017). Obesity. Retrieved from: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/maps-and-graphics/the-most-obese-fattest-countries-in-the-world/

World Health Organization. (2013). Health promotion strategies. Retrieved from: https://www.searo.who.int/entity/healthpromotion/health-promotion-strategies/en/