The Pillars of Community Health Programs: Engagement, Regulation, and Continuous Improvement

Welcome to the Community Health Management Design podcast. I'm Dr. Tami Moser, and in today's episode, we'll delve into six pivotal areas essential for fortifying your community health program's foundation and boosting its success. We'll cover stakeholder engagement, technology integration, regulatory compliance, pilot testing, cross-cultural considerations, and sustainability planning. By integrating these components, you'll craft a robust, realistic implementation plan that ensures long-term success and community impact. Stay tuned as we explore practical strategies and insights to enhance your program's effectiveness and resilience. Let's dive in!

Tami Moser [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the community health management design podcast. I'm doctor Tami Moser. Today, we'll dive deeper into 6 crucial areas that will strengthen your program's foundation and increase its chances of success. The first is stakeholder engagement. Stakeholder engagement is vital for any community health program. It involves identifying and involving key individuals or groups who have an interest in or affected by your program. Engaging stakeholders ensures buy in, gathers diverse perspectives, and can provide valuable resources and support. So here's how you use it.

Tami Moser [00:00:37]:
1, identify key stakeholders, e g community leaders, health care providers, patients, develop engagement strategies, for instance, advisory boards or focus groups, and regularly communicate progress and seek feedback. You wanna include this in your implementation planning and team structure section to show how you'll involve various parties throughout the process, and you'll see, stakeholder engagement and, methodology for determining how you would interact with stakeholders in terms of communication in your Excel workbook. The second is technology integration. You know, in today's digital age, leveraging technology can significantly enhance your program's efficiency and effectiveness. It's important because technology can streamline operations, improve data collection and analysis, and enhance patient engagement. So you use it by assessing your program's technological needs, researching and selecting appropriate tools, for instance, patient management systems, telehealth platforms, email marketing platforms, and then create an integration timeline and training plan. Now don't forget this can also include technology to manage your social media presence, where you can streamline that and become more effective in doing it and have those communications be regular. And then you wanna create an integration timeline and training plan.

Tami Moser [00:02:05]:
So you wanna incorporate this into your implementation planning and team structure timeline showing when and how you'll introduce new technologies and who they'll be introduced to, who needs training on them, who's responsible, and who's accountable. Then 3rd is regulatory compliance. Adhering to relevant regulations is crucial to your program's legitimacy and sustainability. It's important because compliance ensures legal operation, protects patients, and can be a competitive advantage. So you use it by 1, researching applicable regulations. For instance, HIPAA state health laws, you wanna develop compliance policies and procedures so everybody's very clear on what needs to be done and how it should be done to be accurate every time, and then implement regular compliance audits. I do not understand. Well, I do, but it bothers me a great deal how many places understand audited on if someone just show were to show up from, for instance, the joint commission or the state board of pharmacy or department of health.

Tami Moser [00:03:27]:
And in many instances, you can even get the forms that an auditor would use. And so my question for everybody is why don't you just print off the form and do your own audits on a regular basis to make sure you're compliant? Would it take some time? Yes. But once you get that set up, it doesn't take a lot of time. And the peace of mind you get from knowing you're compliant and then if somebody walks in, they're not gonna find anything wrong is worth a lot. It's worth a lot. So I mentioned this because you will wanna put a section in your competitive landscape and advantage area to highlight how compliance sets your program apart and how you'll be compliant. Then you'll need those policies and procedures set up on the back end for your organizational needs. Then you have pilot testing.

Tami Moser [00:04:21]:
So a pilot test allows you to trial your program on a smaller scale before full implementation, and, the plan, do, study, act, or check, act, methodology can be very helpful here because you can test small scale change before you ramp it up. And so you can use that methodology or not. You can just set it up as a pilot test, a smaller view of what you're gonna be doing. It's important because it helps identify potential issues. It refines processes, and you can gather initial data on your effectiveness through that test. And then you're able to change or adapt quickly to then roll it out at a larger scale. How do you use this? Well, you design a small scale version of your program. You set clear objectives, success metrics, and timelines.

Tami Moser [00:05:11]:
So this timeline also may be shortened in order to get a better perspective, and then you analyze results, make adjustments, and then go forward. And this is why I think the PDSA cycle itself would be very useful. So I'll present some information from the IHI in your resources section, and you can take a look at that if you're not already familiar. But you can include this as a key milestone in your milestone in your implementation planning and steam team structure timeline. Right? If you're gonna do a pilot test, you need to make sure that you've defined where and how that's happening. The number 5, we have cross cultural considerations. So ensuring the cultural competence is for effectively serving diverse populations and communities. So it's important because it improves patient trust, engagement, and outcomes by respecting cultural differences.

Tami Moser [00:06:02]:
So you can use this by first researching the cultural makeup of your target population, and we've already discussed this. So you've got information to help you here. You incorporate culturally appropriate practices and materials and provide cultural competency training for staff. So that cultural competency training for your staff can can become very important. It's a piece of this puzzle that can't be over or shouldn't be overlooked. And you expand on this in your patient profiling and value proposition section. So it showing how you'll tailor your approach to different cultural groups and that might be represented through the different personas you define. Then the last here is sustainability planning.

Tami Moser [00:06:41]:
So planning for long term sustainability ensures your program can continue serving the community beyond the initial implementation. It's important because it secures ongoing funding, maintains community support, and allows for continuous improvement. And one thing I will say here is some programs, you have initial funding, so you can run it the first time through grant funds or some other funding mechanism. But in order for it to be sustainable, it has to then have enough of a return that it can stay live and function independently without that external funding. So this is something you definitely wanna think about the sustainability planning. You use it through developing diverse funding strategies. So as my grandma would say, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Right? Try to try to look at how can we raise funds for this across a larger spectrum instead of just using one source that might disappear.

Tami Moser [00:07:38]:
Build strong community partnerships. Those community partnerships could end up helping with funding later on and then implement continuous evaluation and improvement processes. This is added to your marketing and patient relationship strategy section, so emphasizing how sustained engagement contributes to your long term success and in your financial planning, which we're coming to. This is where you'll start getting into those diverse funding opportunities. So here's some additional prompting for your work this week. You wanna strengthen your portfolio assignment and include the following. 1, a brief pilot testing plan within your implementation timeline. So outline the objectives, duration, and evaluation metrics for your pilot phase.

Tami Moser [00:08:26]:
So even if you don't think this is feasible, I want you to take time to actually develop a pilot test even if you wouldn't use it later. This gives you some practice in putting one in putting one together and how it would fit and what you need to think about. And then you can ask questions if you have them. Sooner or later, this will be something you would want to do in one of the programs more than likely you design. A section on cultural competence needs to be developed detailing how you'll ensure your program is culturally appropriate based on your patient profiles and include some specific strategies or adaptations you'll implement. So for instance, what would be the differential between a patient that has this kind of cultural background versus a different persona with a different cultural background? What how would that look different and what you would need to adapt in your overall plan? Preliminary sustainability plan, and this is preliminary. We're gonna get to funding next, so you'll be adding to this. But outline your strategies for maintaining the program long term, including potential funding sources, community partnerships, and methods for ongoing patient engagement.

Tami Moser [00:09:42]:
These additions will enhance the comprehensiveness of your implementation plan. They'll demonstrate your understanding of the complex factors involved in launching and maintaining a successful community health and team structure and team structure. Sorry. We almost made it without them deciding to jump in. The competitive landscape and advantage, patient profiling value proposition, patient relationship strategies. By addressing these additional areas, you'll create a more robust, realistic, and well rounded implementation plan. Good luck with this week's work, and I look forward to seeing your enhanced portfolios.