Essay on Mary Open Doors' Domestic Violence & Water Programs in Belize: Evaluating Impact

Introduction

The selected programs from Belize included domestic violence and water programs. Mary Open Doors implemented these programs along with Water Missions Belize and the Ministry of Health. The domestic violence program was aimed at reducing the prevalence of the issue and ensuring that those who are affected by its access resources needed for their recovery. To assess whether the program has achieved its goals, the implementors developed pre-test questions at the start of the program and distributed to the participants. The questions were aimed at understanding respondents' knowledge of domestic violence and resources. It was also reported that at the end of the program, post-test questions were asked to explore whether the program intervention achieved led to desired goals or outcomes. Regarding the water program, it was noted that the locals did not embrace the chlorination of water because of the taste.

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The implementors reported that during program implementation, the progress of the program towards achieving desired outcomes is recorded in the form of photos or videos. This is aimed tat documenting all undertakings of the community. It was noted that there is a tendency of those tasked with running the program to report the positive effects only. However, the adverse effects of the program should also be reported.

Challenges to Evaluation and Reporting

One of the potential challenges when evaluating health-related programs is the multifactorial nature of health issues (Rural Health Information Hub, 2020). Various factors affect public health issues. For example, a factor that may affect the likelihood of domestic violence in the community is the strength of family and social networks. Noteworthy, social support is necessary for resolving domestic violence-related issues (Holtmann & Nason-Clark, 2018; Management Association, Information Resources, 2018; Vijaya & Shamsi, 2018).

Additionally, socioeconomic factors (e.g., level of educational attainment and income) affect the achievement of desired health outcomes (Riegelman & Kirkwood, 2018; Pacquiao & Douglas, 2018). For example, people with high-income levels are more likely to access resources needed to attain the desired behavior if the resources are not provided for free to all community members. Individuals from low-income backgrounds may struggle to meet their health outcomes because they do not possess sufficient funds. Such people often fall short in reaching their intended health outcomes.

One of the challenges that may be encountered when reporting the outcomes of a health program is the low literacy levels of the participants. Low literacy level is prevalent in low-income communities. This can be attributed to the fact that most households lack the financial resources necessary for educating children and attaining literacy. When populations with high illiteracy rates encounter reports that are difficult to interpret due to language barriers; additionally, communities with lower levels of illiteracy tend not to utilize results of programs optimally and thus fail to realize any long-term social change intended by such programs.

Notable also is that populations with low levels of literacy tend to possess poor health literacy (Elsevier, 2019; Joel, 2017). Health literacy refers to an individual's ability to access, understand, and utilize health services and information needed for making appropriate health decisions (NNLM 2020). A low level of health literacy has been reported as being associated with adverse health outcomes including failure to comprehend medical information properly, poor engagement with healthcare providers and not knowing enough about diseases and conditions (Jayasinghe et al. 2016). In the Belize program, a low level of health literacy implies that the community members may not understand health information in the reports. Therefore, they are less likely to seek further clarification from the healthcare providers regarding their problems.

Strategies for Addressing the Evaluation and Reporting Challenges

The evaluation challenge related to the multifactorial nature of health issues can be addressed through identification of the major factors, other than the intervention, that affect the desired outcome. After the identification of these factors, efforts should be made to keep extraneous variables constant. According to Chiang et al. (2015), this can be accomplished by testing all participants at once in one location with identical instructions and taking similar approaches for treatment.

Holding these variables constant helps establish the cause-effect relationship between an intervention and its result (Forsyth, 2018). By holding confounding factors constant, there is an increased likelihood that results of the program can be directly attributable to it; implementors are then better able to evaluate whether their intervention was successful in producing desired outcomes or not. Finally, any issues surrounding low levels of literacy in a community and how that impedes participants understanding the report can be overcome by recruiting literate members who will serve as translators when translating content between two copies of reports for participants to understand. The experts can also translate the final report to the local language to ease understanding.

References

Rural Health Information Hub. (2020). Evaluation challenges. https://www.ruralhealthinfo.org/toolkits/rural-toolkit/4/evaluation-challenges

Chiang, I.-C. A., Jhangiani, R. S., & Price, P. C. (2015). Experiment basics. In Research Methods in Psychology. BCcampus. https://opentextbc.ca/researchmethods/chapter/experiment-basics/

Elsevier. (2019). Effective communication for health professionals. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Forsyth, D. R. (2018). Group dynamics. Cengage Learning.

Holtmann, C., & Nason-Clark, N. (2018). Religion, gender, and family violence: When prayers are not enough. BRILL.

Jayasinghe, U. W., Harris, M. F., Parker, S. M., Litt, J., van Driel, M., Mazza, D., Del Mar, C., Lloyd, J., Smith, J., Zwar, N., & Taylor, R. (2016). The impact of health literacy and life style risk factors on health-related quality of life of Australian patients. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, 14. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12955-016-0471-1

Joel, L. A. (2017). Advanced practice nursing: Essentials for role development. F.A. Davis.

Management Association, Information Resources. (2018). Social issues surrounding harassment and assault: Breakthroughs in research and practice: breakthroughs in research and practice. IGI Global.

NNLM. (2020). Health Literacy. https://nnlm.gov/initiatives/topics/health-literacy

Pacquiao, D. F., & Douglas, M. "Marty." (2018). Social pathways to health vulnerability: Implications for health professionals. Springer.

Riegelman, & Kirkwood, B. (2018). Public Health 101. Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Vijaya, P., Barre, & Shamsi, A. (2018). Handbook of research on geriatric health, treatment, and care. IGI Global.