MAnagement

1. Study Session 4
Implementing your
Health Plans
By:Alemayehu E(BSC,MPH)
@Nekemte,Oromia,Ethiopia

2. Implementing your Health Plans
When you have studied this session, you should be able to:
 Define and use correctly all of the key words printed in bold.
 Discuss how to implement a health management plan by organising
relevant activities and resources.
 Describe team building concepts and stages so that you can effectively
implement your health management plan.
 Explain how to lead and motivate team members such as volunteers,
primary healthcare workers and model families.
 Briefly describe the importance and procedures of health-related
meetings.

3. Getting organised
• Organising is the means of distributing authority, providing
channels of communication and arranging the work in order to
achieve the correct outcome.
• Getting organised is the first stage in bringing together
the right combination of human, physical and financial
resources to successfully undertake your planned activities.
• Organising activities or groups of activities involves planning
all your activities in order to avoid any duplication of jobs

4. Getting organised...
Organising is the means by which:
 the right things are done (what)
 in the right place (where)
 at the right time (when)
 in the right way (how)
 by the right people (by whom).

5. Organizing....
• Work should be arranged in such a way that team members
make best use of their individual skills and talents.
• It is important to distribute work fairly.
• You may need to prepare a checklist which describes tasks
among the health team.
• The checklist can state the objectives, activities and
responsibility of each person.

6. Building a team
• A health team is a group of people who share common
objectives, determined by community need.
• Each member of the team contributes to the achievement of the
common goal.
• Your health team members include, for example, health
promoters, model households, opinion and political leaders and
various community association members.
• It is always important that their work and contributions are
recognised.

7. Types of health team
• Formal teams are teams assembled to address a specific problem or issue,
or to achieve specific health goals. Example:a task force or committee.
• A committee is usually a small, deliberately assembled group of people
who are organised to consider and take decisions about a specific set of
issues.
• These can be long-term or permanent teams designed to perform ongoing,
specific organisational tasks.
• For example, as a HEP you might form a committee composed of a model
household representative, a kebele leader, a religious leader and
representatives of community based associations, such as a youth or
women’s group.

8. Stages of team building
• Team building usually refers to the process of
selecting and creating a team within a community.
• To improve the performance of any health teams
that you are keen to develop it is helpful to follow
the structured four stage team building model
originally developed by Tuckman (1965)

9. Forming
• The first stage in team development is the forming
stage.
• During this stage your health team members get to
know each other and find out which behaviours will
be acceptable to the rest of the group members.
• Members establish initial rules and ways of
working with each other.
• This exercise helps the team to create trust among
team members.

10. Storming
• During the storming stage, team members are encouraged to
participate and engage with the issues and decisions that are
key to the success of the community health team in achieving
its goals.
• This is the stage when health team members may challenge,
disagree with, and question one another.
• This stage can be uncomfortable for some members, but it is
an important stage in tackling problems.

11. Norming
• At this stage the team comes to an agreement on its
purpose and plans.
• Members are clear what their roles and responsibilities
are and how they fit into the team.
• The team has a sense of identity and tries to work
together.
• By the time the team reaches this stage they know how to
work with each other.

12. Performing
• Group structure, norms and behaviour are understood and
accepted.
• Members know how to work with each other and can
effectively handle disagreements and misunderstandings.
• Differences have minimised and members have dealt with
them.
• The group is now focused on accomplishing its purpose.

14. Leading a team
• Leading is the management function that you will use
when influencing, motivating and directing people in your
team towards the achievement of your organisational
goals.
• All teams benefit from direction and as a leader you must
deal with and motivate the people you work with in your
health teams.

15. Styles of leading a team
• There are three main styles of leading a team:
 Autocratic - Do what I say. They tend to be dictatorial, saying
for example ‘Do what you are told, and don’t ask questions!’
 Anarchic - Do what you like.They tend to say things like, ‘I
don’t care what you do, so long as you keep out of my way!’
 Democratic - Let us agree on what we are to do. They are
consultative and take advice from their team, saying things
such as, ‘These are the goals we have to achieve.

16. Motivating a team
• As most of your team members are likely to be unpaid
volunteers, motivation of team members is going to play an
important role in the success of any health plan for your
community.
• When each team member feels important to the team and trusts
the team they will bring their best skills to the group.
• This will boost the team and motivate its members to succeed

17. Keeping your team motivated
 Take the time to meet with and listen to team members.
 Provide teams with specific and frequent feedback about their
performance, and support them in improving their performance.
 Recognise, reward and promote high performance; deal quickly with
poor performance so that they can improve and learn from mistakes.
 Provide information on how the organisation has achieved or failed to
achieve the community health goals.
 Involve teams in decisions, especially those decisions that affect them.
 Give members of the team the opportunity to grow and develop new
skills

18. Motivation....
 Provide team members with a sense of ownership in their work
and their working environment.
 Strive to create a work environment that is open, trusting and
fun.
 Encourage new ideas, suggestions and initiatives.
 Celebrate individuals’ successes and take time for morale
building team meetings and activities.
 Personally thank team members for doing a good job.

19. Training your team
• Training a local health team is one of the HEPractitioner’s
responsibilities.
• The Health Extension Programme uses community member
training as a means of making the best use of people in the
community.
• The quality of health care and its equitable distribution in a
population depends upon the staff employed by the health
services, and upon community members trained with some
knowledge and skills of health.

20. Training...
• A team leader uses training to make sure that each
member of the team can play their part in achieving their
goals, both as an individual and with other members of
the team.
• Training as a means of solving health problems must be
closely related to work in the field, and to the
management of priority health problems.

21. Conducting meetings

22. Conducting meetings
• Meetings are a necessary part of the Health
Extension Programme because meetings are
the way in which health teams communicate
with people in their locality

23. Different types of meetings:
 Large public meetings, often held in the open air, to encourage
people to express their views on a community health problem
or to inform and explain something new to the community.
 Small meetings often held with community leaders to identify
health problems and needs.
 Meetings with special groups, such as young people or
mothers, for the specific purposes of health education.
 Regular meetings of the health team.
 Committee meetings, which may be important in making
decisions about new ideas.
 Discussion groups to learn new skills, techniques and
approaches.

24. Planning your meetings
When preparing for a meeting it is useful to plan the following:
 purpose of meeting
 main subject matter
 type of meeting
 size of meeting
 place, time and duration of meeting
 who is convening and organising the meeting
 announcement or information about the meeting

25. Purpose
• In all cases, the purpose of the meeting should be made clear. For a
formal committee, the agenda should state the purpose.

26. Have an agenda
• If a meeting is to be useful, each person present
must have as much information as possible about
the agenda to be discussed.
• Distribute the agenda to participants before the
meeting so participants can be prepared for the
meeting.

27. Start on time and end on time
• Every meeting should have established start
and end times.
• Be sure to start your meetings at the appointed
time and run no longer than the end time.

28. Maintain focus
• Stay on topic and avoid the temptation to get
diverted by interesting but unproductive points
of view.
• Stick to the topic and the timelines you set for
each item on the agenda.

29. Capture action points
• Have a system for capturing, summarising and
assigning action points to individual team members.
• This can often be handled by assigning specific
roles to people who are at the meeting, such as
timekeeper and reporter.

30. Get feedback
• Get feedback on your meeting management.
• Remember feedback tells you not only what
you did right but also what you did wrong
providing you with ideas on how to make your
future meetings more effective.

31. THANK YOU!