Program Planning & Social Policy: Estimating Time, Cost & Risks - Research Paper

Introduction

Policies are the statement that explains what is expected for every team member in terms of actions, deliverables, and behaviors. Program planning is a set of artifacts and activities that illustrates how the work is to be done (Vedung, 2017). These mostly involve the estimation of the time to be taken, cost, risks involved, the sequence of events, and measures to be made. Also, planning consists in setting strategies and objectives that are to be achieved. Social policy and program planning focus on ways that organizations and governments create a more equitable and humane society. Policies are restructured in a way to meet the specific need of all the people.

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I have participated in the public health policy and program due to my desire to serve my society for a healthy living. This public health policy was created to promote a full national condition that enhances good health, healthy behaviors, and prevent diseases. It holds that good health does not only comes from proper medication but also implementing public policies and programs that improve and protect the health of every individual (Kokkinen et al., 2017). Public health carries out various educational programs to the people for healthier living. People are taught physical fitness and activities, how to prevent the outbreak and the spread of infectious diseases. Also, people are encouraged to use safe food and drinking water, treat water with fluoride for dental and oral health as well as discourage the use of tobacco for a smoke-free environment.

Health has become one of the basic needs of the livelihood of a human being. However, preventable diseases are on the rise all over the world. These diseases include diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and cancer (Tran, Zimmerman & Fielding, 2017). Some cancers kill more individuals today than other conditions. For the last four decades, more research has been done to come up with the intervention and treatments for increasing chronic diseases. Due to these health challenges, the government has come up with various health policies and programs to resolve health problems in society. These health policies are classified in different categories, such as public health policy, global health policy, health care services, insurance policy, personal healthcare policy, mental health policy, and pharmaceutical policy. Also, there are other policies related to public health like tobacco control policy, vaccination policy, and breastfeeding promotion policy.

Being a professional in social policy and program, I was involved in one on one interaction with the members of the community. I was more involved in public health programs due to my desire to make a positive health change. The government is mandated to establish public health policies and programs to ensure the society members are healthy. Nevertheless, the responsibility to improve and maintain general health is an all-inclusive duty for both the government and private sectors. Working as a service provider in one of the government public health agencies, I was mandated in assessing, protecting, and assuring the community health conditions. In so doing, the success of health care policies and programs is measured based on both the organizational and individual factors. The RE-AIM framework, which stands for; Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance, is used (Forman et al., 2017). This method aims at balancing both the external and internal validity, and the outcome is operationalized at the organizational level, individual level, or both.

Reach and effectively used in the individual level are measures based on the number of participants who wish to receive health benefits from the program. Reach involves the number of people who receive the benefit from the targeted population (Forman et al., 2017). Effectiveness looks at the primary outcome, quality of life achieved, and possible negative outcome discovered. On the other hand, the organizational level looks at the adoption and implementation, which are measured by the delivery staff levels. Confirmation is determined by the number of delivery staff that implement and sustain a specific intervention. Therefore, adoption is the number of staff that represent the target population in a program. Implementation is the extent to which the response is delivered as per the set cost. Finally, maintenance is regarded as the degree in which intervention is sustained for a minimum of six months at the individual level.

The RE-AIM framework has been widely used in healthcare policies and programs. Some of the areas it has been applied include cancer screening, public health policy, chronic illness self-management, HIV management, diabetes prevention, and women's health, among others. It is mainly used as a guiding tool in the planning and evaluation of health policies and programs. Also, it is applied by the government agencies to ensure there are sufficient health services in every society. Public health agencies have played a significant role in reducing illness, environmental risks, and injuries in the community.

These agencies carry out their initiative by collecting, monitoring, and disseminating data on health status and predict the future. However, some of the health policies and programs are discriminating, such as insurance health policies. For instance, legislators are provided with unique covers that are paid for using government funds. Also, people may encounter oppression and alienation at the disposal of public health programs. Therefore, the government should ensure there is equality in service delivery and make use of the RE-AIM framework to provide quality health care and better patient outcomes.

References

Forman, J., Heisler, M., Damschroder, L. J., Kaselitz, E., & Kerr, E. A. (2017). Development and application of the RE-AIM QuEST mixed methods framework for program evaluation. Preventive medicine reports, 6, 322-328.

Kokkinen, L., Muntaner, C., O'campo, P., Freiler, A., Oneka, G., &Shankardass, K. (2017). Implementation of Health 2015 public health program in Finland: a welfare state in transition. Health promotion international, 34(2), 258-268.

Tran, L. D., Zimmerman, F. J., & Fielding, J. E. (2017). Public health and the economy could be served by reallocating medical expenditures to social programs. SSM-population health, 3, 185-191.

Vedung, E. (2017). Public policy and program evaluation. Routledge.