Question

Imagine that you are a public health nurse, and you and your colleagues have determined that the threat of a deadly new strain of influenza indicates a need for mass inoculation program in your community. Explain in details in your own ideas, what public health data would have been used to determine the need for such a program? Where would you locate public health data? What data will be collected to determine the success of such a program? How might you communicate this to other communities or internationally?

Answer 1

Public health surveillance is traditionally defined as the ongoing systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health data, essential to the planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health practice.

Public health data can be collected from variou sources which include, Community health workers, public health deparetments, community leaders, primary health centers, community health centers, community leaders, community volunteers, Anganawadi, ASHA Workers, USHA workers, Public health institute, edicational organizations, sentinel surveillence, medical and health ministry registries etc. The various public health data collected include,

• Disease trends over time
• Mortality rate
• Morbidity rate
• Quality of life of people
• High risk category population
• Local health agencies available
• Laboratories and hospitals
• Nongovernmental public and private agencies, voluntary organizations, and individuals.

Evaluation is an important tool to determine how and why a program is succeeding. It can also help diagnose challenges or determine where changes can be made to strengthen the program. The sucess of the programme can be collected based on  reviewing the situation in earlier and after the impimentation of the programme in the community area.Gather data for each measure and use the data to assess progress. Revise activities. Regularly report progress to your community and to the funders. Compare the changes happend before and after the implimentation of the programme. The incidence and prevalence of the disease before and after the implimentation of the programme can be evaluated to assess the effectiveness of the programme. The morbidity rate, mortality rate before and after the proramme implimentation can be evalauted.the following data can be collected,

• Patient demographic information
• Number of people who received the programme
• Number of Community health program activities consumers engaged in
• Number of referrals made
• Number of education programs facilitated by the health worker
• Number of people screened
• Number of people diagnosed
• Number of people timely received treatment
• Number of mortality
• Morbidity rate of people
• Wellness rate of people

Communication of data is another important aspect of success of community health programmes. Health communication is the study and practice of communicating public health data within the community, Nationallay and internationally.The success of the programme can be communicated via campaigns, research papers, presentations, Mass medias, entrtainment channels, press, news papers, hands on training ec.There are many purposes and reasons why health communication research is important and how it betters the health care field. Research suggests that nonverbal and verbal communication between health care professionals and patient can lead to improved patient outcomes. So this helps in improved patient care.

Mass health education is another mode of communication, where a large group of people can be educateda at a time. Health Communication campaigns are arguably the most utilized and effective method for spreading health information related to success of a programme. Health communication relies on strong interpersonal communication in order to influence health decisions and behaviours. The most important of these relationships are the connection and interaction between an individual and their health team workers. so direct communication between the health team members can also promoted.