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Printable Version
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Overview
This topic is temporarily convened by Dr Nick Henwood - could you suggest someone who could take this role?
A key attribute of any community health programme's management team must be realism. Our eyes should be open, our heads should not be buried in the sand...
We must be able to say "yes" to each of the following questions:
Do we understand the situation around us?
Do we understand our own resourses and constraints?
Are we measuring what we do?
Can we demonstrate progress towards our goals?
In CHGN's October/November 2006 newsletter we discussed SWOT analysis:
COULD YOU USE THE NETWORK TO HELP DEAL WITH THE WEAKNESSES AND THREATS YOUR PROJECT FACES?
SWOT analysis is a really useful way of evaluating the capacity of your project. Just make 4 headings as listed below and set aside a couple of hours.
This is best undertaken as a group activity and should include both leaders and other team members. Sometimes it is helpful for people to make their own list before coming together for the group discussion.
First look at yourself as an organisation - what are your own strengths and what are your weaknesses. Take time for this... and be honest. Then look at issues that are outside your control - what things around you represent opportunities for your project? And what things look more like threats?
List the Items you agree about under each of the above headings. Use the exercise to 'open your eyes' to your local situation.
Here are some examples:
If you are a faith-based organisation working in the area of TB control, you may realise that a weakness is failing to see how a God-centred approach to health and wholeness might transform the way you diagnose and treat TB.
If you run a women's reproductive-health project, a weakness might be that you don't know and follow 'good practice guidelines'. Or that you are not learning from other projects working in nearby areas. If you are, you can mark this as a strength.
If you are trying to launch a community fund to buy and distribute essential drugs, you may find it hard to gain the level of community ownership of the scheme to make it a success. You would mark that as a threat.
If you are working with disabled children, you may find that working in line with your national government is a threat as you become swamped with paper work.
If you are distributing bed-nets for malaria control, or have decided on what to use for malaria treatment, you may be dismayed that the international guidelines have just changed. This seems like a threat to the way you've operated your programme.
Having done this analysis, don't just put it on the shelf. Use it to help plan strategies so your programme can build on its strengths and opportunities, and decide on ways of dealing with threats and weaknesses.
Covering a wide range of important topics, Community Health Global Network aims to be the forum where you can learn about and share in such areas as: God-centred approaches to health and wholeness, examples of good practice, fostering community participation, and working alongside national and international programmes.
Please contribute your experiences of SWOT, or other methods of situational analysis to the Network's discussion forum (click on link on the top right of this window). If you have a fuller description of how you used such a tool in your programme, you could write it up as a "Member's Experience". Then other health workers, facing similar weaknesses and threats to their projects will be able to benefit from your experiences.
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Practices members have applied in their own situations
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This topic is convened by: |
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Dr Nick Henwood
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