The planning process is very important in the development of a healthcare campaign program. The reason is that the plan gives a roadmap or a guideline about how the campaign will actually be conducted. The plan gives important details of what needs to be addressed in the actual campaign. Just to provide a snippet, the planning process involves important aspects such as identification and definition of the problem, performance of market research about the problem, definition of the marketing strategy, development of interventions, evaluation of the plan, and ultimately, making it clear how the plan and certain elements of the plan will be implemented.
Perhaps the most valuable element of the planning process in developing a public health campaign is the definition of the marketing strategy. The objective of a public health campaign is to ensure that the target audience receives the intended message. Most public health campaigns entail prevention measures of certain illnesses or health conditions. During the planning process, various critical questions are asked, such as the different media the healthcare providers will use to reach the target audience, the type of language they ought to use to make the message comprehensible, as well as the literacy levels of the target audience (CDC, 2019). Quite evidently, market research and marketing strategy are intricately linked. The objective of conducting marketing research is to establish attitudes, beliefs, values, and other important aspects of the target audience. It is from such findings that the healthcare providers who want to develop the public health campaign can develop appropriate marketing strategies. The development of marketing strategies also depends on how big the target audience is, or simply, the composition of the target audience (Frieden, 2014). If the target audience is not small, specific or rather; comprises of different groups of people, then, a multi-pronged approach may need to be employed to ensure that the various needs of the diverse audience are met.
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One important factor that may facilitate the planning of the public health campaign is the availability of information about the target audience. When developing a plan, it is always to have as much information as possible about the target population (Public Health Ontario, 2019). It is important to have such information in order to create a plan that is in tandem with the characteristics of the population. If there are numerous articles, books, or credible sources on the internet that describe the characteristics of the target population, then the planning process will be very easy.
The lack of finances may inhibit the planning process. The planning process will ultimately need gathering of information about the target population, and inevitably, some costs, whether direct or miscellaneous, will have to be incurred. The information will not just be gathered in the library or from online sources. On the contrary, it may become necessary to travel to the areas where the target population resides, and engage with stakeholders or opinion leaders in the locations of the target audience. Finances may be incurred in form of transport costs, and facilitation fees. If there will be no finances to facilitate the process, then the planning process may be hampered.
In conclusion, the planning process is very vital in developing a public health campaign, and one of the valuable elements of the process is definition of the marketing strategy. A public health campaign revolves around ensuring that the target audience gets the message clearly, and that is the reason the marketing strategy is the most important. While getting adequate information about the target population will facilitate the planning process, the lack of or inadequate finances may hamper the progress of the process.
References
CDC. (2019). “Gateway to Health Communication” https://www.cdc.gov/healthcommunication/healthbasics/HowToDo.html
Frieden, T. R. (2014). Six components necessary for effective public health program implementation. American journal of public health , 104 (1), 17-22.
Public Health Ontario. (2019). “At A Glance: The six steps for planning a health promotion program” https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/documents/six-steps-planning-hp-programs.pdf?la=en
