Health Promotion Plan For Australian Indigenous And Torres Strait Islander Communities Essay.

Prepare a detailed project plan for an innovation in chronic disease health education, promotion, prevention or management for an Australian community. Explore how you anticipate it will improve health outcomes for the chosen community.

This essay will detail a project plan for an innovation in chronic disease health education, promotion, prevention and management for an Australian community. The essay will also explore whether this plan will improve health outcomes for the chosen community. Chronic disease is said to be a condition of human health that is constant and enduring in its consequences. Generally, in medical science a disease is termed as chronic when the duration of that disease resides for more than three months. Common such diseases are COPD, asthma, oral disease, arthritis, cancer and so on (Smith, 2005). Characteristics of chronic diseases are various risk factors, complicated casualty, long dormancy phase, prolonged illness course, functional destruction. The AIHW data has presented that almost 1in2 children of 12years of age had tooth decay in their permanent teeth, which represent a major issue in Australia (Aihw.gov.au, 2015). This healthcare project plan hence concentrated on the oral health of the teenagers in Australia. For successful planning and implementation the author has focused on local level engagement in terms of initial step towards an improvement chronic disease health education, promotion, prevention and management for an Australian community. This plan will include a specific health message, a health promotion prevention or management plan that is community focused, individual target group for the health project and health outcomes for this plan.

Talking to the target community, recognizing concern areas and need assessment, identification of target group, recognizing networks, partners and stakeholders, writing up plan, main massages, resources, election of communication media, developing a timeline and budget and finally the evaluation of this project plan (Chew, Carter, Rankin, Boyden & Egan, 2010).

The selected community for this project plan is Australian indigenous and Torres Strait Islander community. Getting involved with this community as part of implementation and development of a project plan is critical. Communicating with this community and establishment of a strong relationship with these people is essential for a successful completion of the project. Most areas across Australia have as a minimum one local indigenous and Torres Strait Islander association. Communicating with this local organization is important primary step. The local organizations with whom the communication can be established are community controlled health service, cultural centre, language centre, community council, independent school, media organization, legal service, women’s resource centers, government agencies and sport clubs.

To start the project planning one should perform some research in order to recognize health issues associated with research within the community. Research prior to a project plan will help to obtain information to share with community people and assist to illustrate why this health project is required. It will also help to get funding and other sources one needs to run the project. It will help to research more regarding the issue and also help one to address the associated complication. The research need to be carried out in few steps. These are holding a meeting, talking to individuals, talking to small groups, literature review of already existing research and talking to local health personnel or doctors. The researcher can hold a community meeting, for instance women’s health group to discuss the health issues associated with oral health (Vozza, 2014). To get proper answers the researcher should discover what the community people think regarding the issue or how much they are aware of the issue. During the meeting the researcher should take notes. It may also happen that few people feel uncomfortable with communicating in groups, so in that case, the researcher can speak with them individually. The interviewer should ask them about the oral health complications and jot down the important points come out from the conversation. Organizing people from same target audience, here the teenagers, I one of the good concession between communicating to individual people and a large group. In this case, the participants are less likely to feel shy among the similar age group people. Immense prior research in terms of literature review is essential to carry out into chronic diseases in indigenous and Torres Strait Islander people and also how to perform the activities associated with health promotion. These health endorsement activities should be carried out along with the local indigenous and Torres Strait Islander health care professionals or the service providers (DeMattei, Allen & Goss, 2012). Commuting with the local doctors, health personnel, registered nurses will always provide a good understanding of the oral health issues. To carry out the research the researcher should concentrate on certain questions like: what are the complications are present associated with oral health? Which problem one needs to focus on urgent basis? Whether it is sensible to do something regarding the issues? Whether some activities have already been performed regarding the issue? To carry out this project what are the problems the researchers may come across? What are the ways to tackle these complications? Whether the researcher has community support? With the support of this question the researcher will be able to make a decision which health issue the researcher is going to deal with, for instance: encouraging regular oral health check up. After analyzing all these issues the researcher should entitled the project with a name. This name will assist the community to identify the project more easily.

Research and Target Group Identification

Identification of the target group is important. This is because the researchers are working hard on the project to develop the wellbeing and health of the community. It is important to take proper time in order to ensure that the researcher is clear regarding who they want to hear to their health promotional messages. The target audience will be decided based on few questions, like: who will get the benefit from the health message? Who can influence the target audience? With health care projects focused on children’s health, the health care providers or the parents are the primary target audience as they take decisions which affect the children’s health. Nevertheless, the decision making may depend upon the children’s age and health issues the researcher is trying to deal with.

Prior one write up the project plan, it is essential to recognize the stakeholders, networks and partners. This is because these people help the research with the project and need to be engaged with the process of planning upfront.

Stakeholders within the community can influence the behavior of the primary and secondary audiences. To successful completion of the project improving partnerships and network are of utmost importance. These can be a low cost manner to extend the resources expertise research and budget of the project and provide it more integrity (Collins, Fair, Dickinson & Peacock, 2009). Few potential partners who can help in this project plan are health care organizations who have already carried out similar projects, local governments, aboriginal engagement officers, schools, youth clubs and local media.

The goal is what the researcher is trying to accomplish.

Goal: to increase awareness of the oral health checkup benefits and encourage visiting doctors for routine check-ups.

Objective: in the upcoming year the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teenagers will be double in number for their oral checkups. The project goal, objective and strategies should follow the SMART format to ensure the overall plan is accountable. SMART represents the following parameters of the project:

Specificity, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time limited

Activities to support doctor visits may include develop community radio programs or plays regarding the issue, such as: oral health complications like plaque formation, painful sensations, tooth decay and how to prevent these complications. This type of dramas could feature community people and formed in association with local aboriginal media groups (Liaw et al., 2011). Key messages can be integrated into the plots through individual character offering advice to other or by demonstrating what takes place if youngsters ignore to live a healthy lifestyle. In association with local doctors or health services and aboriginal media groups the researchers can also arrange community days to support health checkups.

Key messages are used to support positive change in behavior of the communities and family members.

Having an oral health check up can prevent one getting sick

Better health builds stronger communities

Translation of the key messages into local languages is important as this have more significance to people.

Mostly people need endorsement for successful completion of the project. Resources are the important part of the project. The resources may include products, equipments, materials and people. People include team members, the number of team members, who will deal with which part of the project, who will be responsible for the administration part and so on. The researcher should also concentrate on the venue selection, for example: whether it is easy to find a venue, whether seasons have impacts, the cost associated with the venue, whether the venue will be comfortable for the target audience, whether there is a transportation issue and so on. Materials and equipments for the project include computers, scanners, printers, video cameras, stationeries. Products include posters, leaflets, table, and chairs and so on.

Stakeholder Engagement and Plan Development

Selection of communication media is very important as it is considered as the best way to reach to the target audience with the key messages. Selection of environment, outlets and activities are also important. The locations where one can reach to the target audience are schools, home, medical centre a community event (Mulholland, 2014). The places need to be selected where the researcher or the researchers can act on the key messages, for example: in medical centre where people can speak to the doctors, health care providers or nurses. Community meetings would be the preferable one for a successful health promotion to be carried out if the target audiences are from the indigenous and Torres Strait Islander community. This is because they find these messages more credible.

One should work out on the project timeline and that should include key activities, team members who are going to perform those activities and the date the researcher is expected to start and finish. To carry out a sensible budget, costs need to be estimated as precisely as possible (Matthews, 2007). This can be achieved by obtaining product quotes and services, exploring other equal projects and getting help from finance officers or who performs similar projects.

Evaluation is considered as the way of reviewing whether the project has met the objectives. It is essential to illustrate the project as this will provide a sense of accomplishment and also assist the researcher to carry out ways to develop the research study for subsequent time or help other members to become skilled at the health associated aspects while structuring individual projects. In this study the researcher can follow qualitative evaluation approaches which are regarding how well the activity was delivered by the researcher and received by the target audience (Killen, 2013). It depends on people conveying their opinion and thoughts, how individual engage with this project, how these target audience felt about performing the activity and what are the other ways the researcher can perform this in a better way in near future. Impact and consequence assessment are significant in health promotion planning and provide support to different programs at different parts in the program. The assessment or evaluation of this project should be correlated with the set up goal and the objectives of the project plan. Assessment would commonly associate with evaluating instant effects of the project and corresponds with the assessment or measurement of the project objectives. For example assessment will check whether there is a change in number of youngsters who visit the doctors for regular oral health checkups. This essay has detailed a project plan for an innovation in oral health care education, promotion, prevention and management for indigenous and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia. This essay also explored whether this project will improve the health consequences of youngsters of the aboriginal and Torres Strait islander community.

References

Aihw.gov.au,. (2015). Dental and oral health (AIHW). Retrieved 15 January 2015.

Chew, D., Carter, R., Rankin, B., Boyden, A., & Egan, H. (2010). Cost effectiveness of a general practice chronic disease management plan for coronary heart disease in Australia. 

Collins, E., Fair, N., Dickinson, A., & Peacock, K. (2009). Collaboration between primary and secondary/tertiary services in oral health.

DeMattei, R., Allen, J., & Goss, B. (2012). A Service-Learning Project to Eliminate Barriers to Oral Care for Children With Special Health Care Needs. 

Killen, C. (2013). Evaluation of project interdependency visualizations through decision scenario experimentation. International Journal Of Project Management.

Liaw, S., Lau, P., Pyett, P., Furler, J., Burchill, M., Rowley, K., & Kelaher, M. (2011). Successful chronic disease care for Aboriginal Australians requires cultural competence. Australian And New Zealand Journal Of Public Health.

Matthews, A. (2007). Project Profile: Trust Systems for Regional Healthcare. Healthcare Quarterly.

Mulholland, K. (2014). Can the use of a social media and SMS based information platforms be used to improve the healthcare in Thailand?. Journal Of Facilities Management.

Smith, J. (2005). Educating to improve population health outcomes in chronic disease. Darwin: Menzies School of Health Research.

Vozza, I. (2014). A multimedia oral health promoting project in primary schools in central Italy.