Health programs help communities prevent disease, promote wellness and keep healthcare costs low. They are a critical tool for addressing the complex and wide-ranging factors that influence individual health, such as social, economic and cultural changes related to food, communication, work patterns, family structures, globalization and changing environmental conditions. The ability to reach large numbers of people with health promotion initiatives is a key factor in their effectiveness. Increasingly, public health officials are aware of the need to include community members in the design and implementation of health programs.
The goal is to provide individuals with information about their health and well-being that is relevant, accessible and understandable. This information can take many forms, including printed materials, videos, computer-based interventions, and electronic outreach and messaging systems. It is crucial that different audiences receive information in formats that are suited to them. This can be a challenge, but it is necessary for health programs to have their intended impact.
A comprehensive wellness program, for example, can produce significant savings in the long term by reducing workplace absenteeism and healthcare costs. In order to create such a program, however, companies must collect actionable data on the needs of their population. The first step is to conduct a health risk assessment, which can identify areas of potential improvement.
The next steps are to gather and analyze the data to develop appropriate programs and to regularly evaluate the outcomes of those programs. This process can be complicated by the lack of availability of accurate and timely data on health risks, which can make it difficult to establish a baseline for existing health status and to determine whether specific programs are working or not. The development of an effective program requires a clear definition of a desired outcome and the determination of how it will be measured, which may require some flexibility in initial goals.
It is also important to understand that health programs must be adapted over time to ensure they meet the evolving needs of their target populations. This is particularly true for programs that are aimed at reducing disparities. A balance must be struck between the moral imperative to do everything possible for everyone, and practical limitations on how rapidly, broadly or intensively a program can be expanded. A delicate interplay between the ideal and the realistic exists in a range of areas such as financial resources, human capacity, health care system quality, behavioral change, and politics.
An important feature of the new approach to developing and evaluating health programs is the emphasis placed on equity as an explicit and nonnegotiable objective. Including this element in all aspects of the intervention package – from strategic goals and metrics to an operating model – helps to ensure that the program has broad population impact, while simultaneously enabling the achievement of other critical objectives such as cost-effectiveness. A clear definition of what is meant by “equity” also allows for the identification and management of tradeoffs that may arise during the process.