Developing Goals and Objectives

Imagine that you are a public health professional working with an organization concerned with childhood diseases. You are concerned about the growing number of parents who do not want to immunize their children because of rumors about vaccine risks. Because you believe this might contribute to many future childhood health problems, you consider developing a public program, in this case, a vaccine program.

As part of the funding application process, you must state your program goals. You write, “I want to increase immunization rates and save the lives of babies.”

Your intentions may be noble, but you may need to define your goals and objectives more clearly, in ways that show they can be measured and assessed. For example, how will you increase immunization rates, and in what time frame?

This week, you examine implications of goals and objectives and create your own goals and objectives following established guidelines for your Scholar-Practitioner Project. You also finalize your group project to analyze the impact of planning and other improvements on program effectiveness.

Learning Objectives

Students will:

• Analyze implications of goals and objectives for public health programs
• Apply goals and SMART guidelines to public health programs
• Analyze contributions of goals and objectives to the effectiveness of public health programs
• Analyze effectiveness of public health programs
• Analyze impact of program planning
• Apply strategies to improve program planning

Required Readings

Fertman, C. I., & Allensworth, D. D. (Eds.). (2017). Health promotion programs: From theory to practice (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

• Chapter 5, “Making Decisions to Create and Support a Program” (pp. 113-139)

https://www.cdc.gov/phcommunities/resourcekit/evaluate/smart_objectives.html