Overview

Develop a 3–5-page report that explains how an organization serves the health care concerns and needs of a population. The report should identify gaps in the health care service, explain strategies to bridge the gaps, and describe potential barriers to those strategies.

Note: The assessments in this course build upon each other. You are strongly encouraged to complete them in sequence.

SHOW LESS

By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria:

• Competency 1: Explain the principles and concepts of disease prevention and health promotion for diverse and vulnerable populations.
  • Identify barriers to implementing evidence-based strategies to bridge gaps in the health care service provided by an organization to a vulnerable or diverse population.
• Competency 2: Develop evidence-based health promotion and disease prevention initiatives for diverse and vulnerable populations.
  • Describe the primary health concern for a vulnerable or diverse population.
  • Identify gaps in the health care service provided by an organization to a vulnerable or diverse population.
  • Explain evidence-based strategies to bridge gaps in the health care service provided by an organization to a vulnerable or diverse population.
• Competency 3: Apply basic epidemiological concepts, data analysis methods, tools, and databases to determine the effectiveness of health promotion and disease prevention initiatives for diverse and vulnerable populations.
  • Explain how a health care organization serves the primary health care concerns of a vulnerable or diverse population.
• Competency 5: Communicate in a manner that is scholarly, professional, and consistent with expectations for members of the health care professions.
  • Write content clearly and logically, with correct use of grammar, punctuation, and mechanics.
  • Correctly format paper, citations, and references using APA style.

  Context

  Pérez and Luquis (2014) stated, “Integrating cultural proficiency practices into the individual practices of health educators and public health organizational policies is a call to action” (p. 50). It is important for those in health care to be aware of the methods used to identify and evaluate the specific health care needs of individuals, communities, and populations, and to understand the meaning of health literacy as it pertains to the needs of a multicultural population or group.
  SHOW LESS

  With a growing diverse population, the incorporation of cultural and linguistic competence should be included into the planning, implementation, and evaluation of health education and promotion programs. “In this process, it is essential to employ theoretical models that describe and explain culture and related concepts (Pérez & Luquis, 2014, p. 165). Cultural constructs need to be applied to all health education, promotion, and prevention interventions targeting diverse communities (Pérez & Luquis, 2014).

  Reference

  Pérez, M. A., & Luquis, R. R. (2014). Cultural competence in health education and health promotion (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Suggested Resources

The following optional resources are provided to support you in completing the assessment or to provide a helpful context. For additional resources, refer to the Research Resources and Supplemental Resources in the left navigation menu of your courseroom.

Assessment models are an integral part of public health program design and evaluation, but you might ask “exactly what are these models and how do I use them?”

If you were a personal trainer and you had a new client, you could just list a variety of exercises and the number of repetitions to do. You could write up a meal plan with recommended breakfasts, lunches, and dinners and have an entire plan to present your client at the first meeting.

It’s possible that such a strategy might meet your clients needs, but it’s unlikely.

No, instead, you would meet with your client and talk about past history, likes and dislikes, concerns, and constraints. Only after determining what your clients goals are, can you begin to design an exercise and diet regimen that will be appropriate for this particular client.

In the same way, while it would be possible to pick a health concern and apply whatever services and program components your agency has employed in the past, such a strategy does not have much chance of success.

Instead, you would want to meet with community stakeholders, gather and analyze information, determine the context of the issue, and then create an intervention that is designed specifically to bring about the changes the community wants and needs.

There are good reasons for using some kind of model or theoretical framework for any intervention.

Most models provide a framework for critical analysis of the context for the situation you’re addressing. They don’t guarantee that your analysis will be complete or accurate, but they certainly help improve your odds!

Models allow you to detail the intervention and this detail allows you to have measurable objectives. Measurable objectives allow you to identify your program’s accomplishments and failures, and in that way establish accountability.

A good model will present a clear picture of what activities will be undertaken and what results you expect to see for the community and the people who make up that community.

Let’s look at two specific models to see how they work.

The first is the PRECEDE – PROCEED model. PRECEDE focuses on the planning of a program and PROCEED on the assessment of its success. For this presentation, we will only look at PRECEDE – the planning.

PRECEDE stands for Predisposing, Reinforcing, and Enabling Constructs in Educational/Environmental Diagnosis and Evaluation. As its name implies, it represents the process that precedes, or leads up to, an intervention.

PRECEDE was developed for use in public health and makes some assumptions about how to prevent illness and promote health. These include:

• Health promotion has to include those affected by the issue or condition in question.
• Health is influenced by community attitudes and the community environment (physical, social, political, and economic).
• Health is only one of many factors that make life better or worse for individuals and the community as a whole.
• Health derives from many other factors – economic, social, political, ecological, and physical – that all contribute to quality of life for individuals and communities.

PRECEDE has four phases:

• Phase 1: Identifying the ultimate desired result.
• Phase 2: Identifying and setting priorities among health or community issues and the behaviors, attitudes, and environmental factors that are either in the way of or necessary for attaining the desired result.
• Phase 3: Identifying the predisposing, enabling, and reinforcing factors that can affect the factors given priority in Phase 2.
• Phase 4: Identifying the administrative and policy factors that influence what can actually be done.

Another model you should consider is PEN-3.

The PEN-3 Model was developed to ensure that culture was not only a part of assisting public health planning, but was actually central in the planning, implementation and evaluation of health interventions.

The PEN-3 is a conceptual model for d of health education programs. It consists of three aspects of health that each contain three factors that must be analyzed and considered in order to reach a culture-centered intervention strategy.

The three aspects of health in a PEN-3 model are:

• Health education.
• Educational diagnosis of health behavior.
• Cultural appropriateness of health behavior.

The first aspect of the pen-3 model is health education.

This aspect helps define the target audience not so much in terms of just focusing on the person exhibiting the health behavior to be changed, but more in terms of an educational effort that encompasses the person and his or her social network. The factors within the health education aspect are:

• Person.
• Extended family.
• Neighborhood.

The integration of individual, family, and community is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the PEN-3 model.

The educational diagnosis aspect looks at the factors that influence actions. Pen-3 identifies these as:

• Perceptions: Knowledge, attitudes and beliefs that may influence whether or not a person will adopt a desired healthy behavior.
• Enablers are those things that enable or make possible the behavior – availability of resources, accessibility, affordability, and so forth.
• Nurturers are those things that a person receives from the social networks that reinforce the desired healthy behavior.

The cultural appropriateness of a health behavior aspect looks at the perceptions, enablers, and nurturers and determines whether or not they lead the population being analyzed to engage in healthy behaviors (positive), have a neutral relationship with health behaviors, but should still be incorporated into the intervention strategy (exotic) or which interfere with the target engaging in healthy behaviors or which encourage harmful behaviors.

PRECEDE and PEN-3 are just two of the many models available for program design and assessment. Different models have different strengths and applications but the common denominator is that models help ensure that your program design addresses clearly defined goals instead of randomly chosen approaches to health intervention.

Internet Resources

Access the following resource by clicking the link provided. Please note that URLs change frequently. Permissions for the following link has either been granted or deemed appropriate for educational use at the time of course publication.

• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health. (n.d.). The National CLAS Standards. Retrieved from http://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=…

Assessment Instructions

Preparation

Now that your team has a better understanding of the population served by the organization, you need to evaluate how able the organization is to serve the specific health care needs of the population identified in the Windshield Survey assessment.

• Use the Internet and the Capella library to locate at least three academic or professional resources to use in this assessment.
• Follow the same formatting instructions that you used in the Windshield Survey assessment. Your assessment should be done as a report for your team, using APA formatting for in-text citations and references.

Requirements

In your organizational evaluation, complete the following:

• Describe the primary health concern for a vulnerable or diverse population.
• Explain how the organization currently serves this health care concern. Be sure you include information on how the organization communicates to the population.
• Identify gaps in the health care service provided to the population.
• Explain evidence-based strategies to bridge the gaps in health care service provided to the population.
• Identify any possible barriers to implementing your strategies.

Additional Requirements

• Include a title page and reference page. The completed assessment should be 3–5 pages in length, not including the title page and reference page.
• Reference at least three current scholarly or professional resources.
• Use current APA format for citations and references.
• Use Times New Roman font, 12 point.
• Double space.

Organizational Evaluation Scoring Guide