Professional Portfolio of Clinical Settings

Question: Explain which population will be most served by your health services marketing plan and why. Describe two barriers that you might face in promoting your health services marketing plan and suggest two strategies for overcoming the barriers you identified. Be specific and provide examples. Answer: Population selected for health services Being a health care administrator for a public health agency in the densely populated area, Andre has planned to implement a prenatal care program for the low-income migrant rural community. The population selected for this initiative is the low-income rural people living in Sub-Saharan Africa. This population has been selected because major people here are inflicted with poverty and cannot afford the cost of health services. Poverty is prevalent in rural Africa, and more than 70% rely on agriculture for livelihood. The sub-Saharan region has the highest concentration of poor people, and the rate of poverty is increasing day by day. Therefore rural population in these areas is forced to lead a poor quality of life, and they are more vulnerable to health risk. Women in this area cannot afford prenatal care and birth of babies take place in the unsafe environment. To eliminate these problems and provide necessary care to pregnant women's, Andre has decided to implement free prenatal ca re service (Fosu, 2015). Barriers to health services marketing Andre plans to make live better for target population by extending the service of prenatal care. For this purpose, he has planned to promote his health service marketing plan by distributing material at a health fair in a target population. The potential challenges that Andre might face in promoting his plan include how to reach this community and how to convince them to understand the effectiveness of prenatal service. Another challenge is how to efficiently develop materials through which community can understand what programs are offered by the agency. Since rural populations are mostly illiterate, they might not realize the importance of prenatal care service. So educating them about the importance of prenatal care will be a challenge for Andre. The language might also come as a barrier in the promotion plan (Hage et al., 2013). Strategies for overcoming barriers The first step for effective market promotion is to reach the target population that is Sub-Saharan Africa and identify what problems they are facing. Communicating with such poverty stricken people is very important. It will help in understanding the demographic variable, social structure, belief and understanding towards illness and their personal health practices. The rise in migration has increased the concentration of poor in Sub-Saharan Africa. A rural community in this region lives in low standard accommodation and less favorable living condition and health. Even if there is any prenatal clinic in the region, it is situated in the unsafe environment. So women hardly go to such clinic. To raise the attendance at such clinic, the safe and secure environment should be provided, and it should be available easily to everyone (Saramunee et al., 2014). For promoting the market health plan, Andre could go for word of mouth promotion describing the convenience of their high quality prenatal care. This would include interacting personally with each person in the community and enquiring about their health preferences. Rural populations have different local dialects which are hard to understand. So engaging other individuals who know the language will be beneficial. Besides this, they could educate women about the importance of prenatal care service (Shannon et al., 2014). They should be made aware that regular checkup during pregnancy is very crucial both the health of the mother as well as the baby. For example, they could tell them that through their service, they can estimate the age of the fetus, identify risk or complication in pregnancy, evaluate the health of both child and mother and provide necessary and timely intervention. Andre could convince them about how their service plan will make their lives better and what special se rvices they will provide. Once rural community understands the importance of prenatal care, they will surely access the free prenatal service. Therefore public awareness is necessary for effective health promotion (ten Hoope-Bender et al., 2014). Another important step is to effectively develop health care program material that target community can understand. They could go for large banners or pamphlets which clearly states the services provided by the agency. It could be written in local language so that rural community can understand. For the understanding of illiterate people, a message could be provided in figure format which people can understand without reading. It could also be done by newspaper advertisements and radio announcements. The material will provide detail on a specific facility that will be provided in the prenatal clinic. For example, there could be quality assurance programs in which complications in pregnancy will be identified, and immediate treatment will be provided. The primary strategy should be to meet the health care needs of pregnant women. This approach can only lead to the success of market health plan (Vonderhei et al., 2013). Reference Fosu, A. K. (2015). Growth, inequality and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa: recent progress in a global context.Oxford Development Studies,43(1), 44-59. Hage, E., Roo, J. P., van Offenbeek, M. A., Boonstra, A. (2013). Implementation factors and their effect on e-Health service adoption in rural communities: a systematic literature review.BMC health services research,13(1), 1. Saramunee, K., Krska, J., Mackridge, A., Richards, J., Suttajit, S., Phillips-Howard, P. (2014). How to enhance public health service utilization in community pharmacy?: General public and health providers' perspectives.Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy,10(2), 272-284. Shannon, G. D., Alberg, C., Nacul, L., Pashayan, N. (2014). Preconception healthcare delivery at a population level: construction of Public Health Models of Preconception Care.Maternal and child health journal,18(6), 1512-1531. ten Hoope-Bender, P., de Bernis, L., Campbell, J., Downe, S., Fauveau, V., Fogstad, H., ... Renfrew, M. J. (2014). Improvement of maternal and newborn health through midwifery.The Lancet,384(9949), 1226-1235. Vonderheid, S. C., Carrie, S. K., Norr, K. F., Grady, M. A., Westdahl, C. M. (2013). Using focus groups and social marketing to strengthen promotion of group prenatal care.Advances in Nursing Science,36(4), 320-335.