PHHE 295. Chapter 5. Community Organizing/ Building and Health Promotion Programming

PHHE 295

Chapter 5: Community Organizing/Building and Health Promotion Programming

Chapter Objectives

1)      Identify the assumptions that underlie the process of community organization.

2)      Briefly explain the difference between locality development, social planning, and social action approaches to community organization.

3)      Explain the difference between needs-based and strength-based community organizing models.

4)      List the steps for a generalized model for community organizing/building.

5)      Explain what is meant by community building.

6)      Explain the difference between health education and health promotion.

7)      State and summarize the steps involved in creating a health promotion program.

8)      Define the term needs assessment.

9)      Briefly explain the six steps used in assessing needs.

10)  Explain the difference between goals and objectives.

11)  List the different types of intervention strategies.

12)  Explain the differences among best practices, best experiences, and best processes.

13)  Explain the purposes of pilot testing in program development.

14)  State the difference between formative and summative evaluation.

Key Terms

·         Community Organizing: Process through which communities are helped to identify common problems or goals, mobilize resources, and in other ways develop and implement strategies for reaching their goals they have collectively set.

·         Grass-Roots: A process that begins with those who are affected by the problem/concern.

·         Gatekeepers: Those who control both formally and informally, the political climate of the community.

·         Task Force: A temporary group that is brought together for dealing with a specific problem.

·         Coalition: Formal alliance of organizations that come together to work for a common goal.

·         Community Building: An orientation to community that is strength-based rather than need-based and stresses the identification, nurturing, and celebration of community assets.

·         Health Education: Any combination of planned learning experiences based on sound theories that provide individuals, groups, and communities the opportunity to acquire information and the skills to make quality health decisions.

·         Health Promotion: Any planned combination of educational, political, environmental, regulatory, or organizational mechanisms that support actions and conditions of living conducive to the health of individuals, groups, and communities.

·         Program Planning: A process by which an intervention is planned to help meet the needs of a priority population.

·         Priority Population: Those whom a program is intended to serve.

·         Needs Assessment: The process of collecting and analyzing information, to develop an understanding of the issues, resources, and constraints of the priority population, as related to the development of the health promotion program.

·         Intervention: An activity or activities designed to create change in people.

·         Multiplicity: The number of activities that make up the intervention.

·         Dose: The number of program units as part of the intervention.

·         Best Practices: Recommendations for interventions based on critical review of multiple research and evaluation studies that substantiate the efficacy of the intervention.

·         Best Experience: Intervention strategies used in prior or existing programs that have not gone through the critical research and evaluation studies and thus fall short of best practice criteria.

·         Best Processes: Original intervention strategies that the planners create based on their knowledge and skills of good planning processes including the involvement of those in the priority population and the use of theories and models.

·         Implementation: Putting a planned program into action.

·         Pilot Test: A trial run of an intervention.

·         Phasing In: Implementation of an intervention with a series of small groups instead of the entire population.

·         Evaluation: Determining the value of worth of an object of interest.

·         Standard of Acceptability: A comparative mandate, value, norm, or group.

·         Formative Evaluation: The evaluation that is conducted during the planning and implementing processes to improve or refine the program.

·         Summative Evaluation: The evaluation that determines the effect of a program on the priority population.

·         Impact Evaluation: Focuses on immediate observable effects of a program.

·         Outcome Evaluation: Focuses on the end result of the program.

Chapter Summary

·         A knowledge of community organizing and program planning is essential for community health workers whose job it is to promote and protect the health of the community.

·         Community organizing is a process through which communities are helped to identify common problems or goals, mobilize resources, and in other ways to develop and implement strategies for reaching their goals that they have collectively set.

·         Community building is an orientation to community that is strength-based rather than need-based and stresses the identification, nurturing, and celebration of community assets.

·         The steps of the general model for community organizing/building include recognizing the issue, gaining entry into the community, organizing the people, assessing the community, determining the priorities and setting goals, arriving at a solution and selecting the intervention strategies, implementing the plan, evaluating the outcomes of the plan of action, maintaining the outcomes in the community, and, if necessary, looping back.

·         Program planning is a process in which an intervention is planned to help meet the needs of a priority population (audience).

·         The steps in the program planning process include assessing the needs of the priority population, setting appropriate goals and objectives, creating an intervention hat considers the peculiarities of the setting, implementing the intervention, and evaluating the results.