This document discusses health planning. It defines health planning as the orderly process of defining health problems, identifying unmet needs, surveying resources, setting priority goals, and taking administrative action. The purpose of health planning is to match limited resources with many problems, eliminate waste, and develop the best course of action to meet health needs and demands of the people. Health planning involves assessing the current status, identifying desired future states, and specifying interventions to achieve new states. Elements of a health plan include objectives, policies, programs, schedules, and budgets. Pre-planning requires government interest, administrative capacity, legislation, and an organization for planning.

1. Ms.Neethu Vincent
Asst Professor
KVM College of Nursing
HEALTH PLANNING

2. INTRODUCTION
 WHAT IS PLANNING?
The process of …..
Setting goals,
Developing strategies and…..
Outlining tasks and schedules to accomplish the
goals.
Planning is deciding in advance what to do, how to
do and who is to do it.

3. DEFINITION
HEALTH PLANNING
 “The orderly process of defining community
health problems, identifying unmet needs and
surveying the resources to meet them,
establishing priority goals that are realistic and
feasible and projecting administrative action to
accomplish the purpose of the proposed
programme”.
WHO

4. PURPOSE OF PLANNING
1. To match the limited resources with
many problems
2. To eliminate wasteful expenditure and
avoid duplication
3. To develop the best course of action to
accomplish a defined objective.

5. HEALTH NEEDS AND
DEMANDS
 The purpose of health planning is to meet the
health needs and demands of the people.
 Health needs is defined as the ‘deficiencies in
health that call for preventive, curative, control
and eradication measures’.
 The needs for safe water supply and sanitation,
control of communicable diseases, medical care
including hospitals, dispensaries and primary
health centres, public health services, family
planning, adequate nutrition, immunization are all
community health needs.
 In democratic country/ developing country
people’s needs may be presented as demands.

6. OBJECTIVES, TARGETS AND
GOALS
An important element of planning is the setting of clear
cut objectives, targets and goals.
Objective:
It is a planned end point of all activities. It is stated
in term of measured amount of progress towards
goal.
Targets:
When the objective is split into discrete activity it
becomes target like number of sputum smear
collected or Tubectomy done.
Goal:
An ultimate desired state towards which the
objectives and resources are directed. Goal is not
constrained by time, resources nor are they
necessarily attainable. They are formulated at top

7. PLANNING FOR HEALTH INVOLVES 3
TYPES OF ACTIVITIES
1. Assessment of the current status
2. Identification of the desired state in
the future
3. Specification of interventions and
other activities to achieve the new
desired state.

8. Elements of a plan
 OBJECTIVES
 POLICIES
 PROGRAMMES
 SCHEDULES
 BUDGET

9. Pre-planning
It is the preparation of planning with preconditions
of
 Government interest: strong “political will”
 Administrative capacity for proper coordination of
activities and implementation of plans
 Legislation: policies translated to legislation
 Organization for planning: eg planning
commission