Management of an Interventional Community-Based Program Based on Information Resulted from Process Evaluation: Isfahan Healthy Heart Program

Abstract

Introduction: Evaluation of interventional community-based initiatives is a basic issue for improvement and management of programs toward the goals of the health system. This paper presents the qualitative part of the process evaluation (PE) of a community-based educational program entitled Isfahan Healthy Heart Program (IHHP) conducted for prevention and control of non-communicable diseases. PE of IHHP aimed to shed insight about implementing interventions; guiding program management and corrective decision makings have been done respectively. Methods: In this qualitative survey, the study population consisted of policy-makers, managers, principal practitioners and their coworkers as well as stakeholders of IHHP. The study was directed in the same place as practicing interventional projects located in Isfahan province. It was begun in 2005 and data analysis phase was completed in 2008. The data were collected through conducting interview with a purposive sample of 60 participants and were analyzed using qualitative content analysis method. Results: Qualitative data were categorized in several headings. Four of the most important headings were as experiences of resources, attitude towards interventions, motivating factors and consistent partnership. Conclusion: Emphasizing on usefulness of qualitative data in process evaluation of IHHP, findings of the present study disclosed some of the effective underpinning factors that the most important of them was described as “executive level human factors”. The study findings emphasized on the vital role of the resources, nevertheless “accepting” the used resources as well interventions specifically on behalf of managers and executive agents were primarily affected by their humanistic qualities such as attitude and willingness to moving towards aimed change. Accepting the program in behalf of users, specifically executive agents, must be considered in such a vast community-based educational program. Keywords: Outcome and Process Assessment (Health Care); Health Education; Management.