Jill Pritts

HPEB 553 - Community Health Problems

MAPP Assignment - 9/30/14

Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships (MAPP) is a program that

utilizes the community to develop a plan of action to improve the health of that specific

community. This program is run by public health officials with an emphasis on targeting issues

that are of importance to the community and improving the effectiveness of the local public

health system in addressing these health topics. MAPP is broken into six steps to help both

identify and make improvements within the community, including organizing, visioning,

assessments, strategic issues, goals and strategies, and action cycle.

Organizing is the initial step, which will include creating a plan that creates a positive

relationship with both the community members and the public health officials or researchers.

This plan should focus on an issue that the community feels is very significant in their lives and

should work to ensure the effective use of the time of everyone involved. This is also a time for

working to build trust with the community, so plans developed should feature open and honest

communication with a real desire to change an issue as it relates to the community rather than

just studying the topic. The visioning stage utilizes community members and health officials to

determine where their collective vision for the area in the next five to ten years. This will create a

common vision to reference throughout the MAPP process and focus on making a lasting

impression rather than conducting a short term study. The assessments stage in the MAPP

process in broken into four different assessments that are all vital to understanding the

community. First, the Community Themes and Strengths Assessment focuses on what problems
are important to the community and what their strengths are as far as existing programs to

improve these issues. Second, the Local Public Health System Assessment analyzes what

resources are available in the community and any potential for how those resources might be

improved or expanded. The Community Health Status Assessment observes the overall health of

the community and what issues may be more prevalent than others. Finally, the Forces of Change

Assessment addresses any pending legislation, advancements in technology, or changes within

the structure of the community that may affect (positively or negatively) the community or its

public health resources. Without any of these four assessments, the success of the MAPP

program may be reduced because of unforeseen developments or misunderstandings of the

community resources and needs. The strategic issues step will involve the community leaders

and public health officials creating a list of issues within the community based on the four

assessments and ranking the list based on significance of the issues and how the issues will help

them achieve the community vision. The goals and strategies step involves setting goals

associated with each of the strategic issues and consider possible implementation s to help reach

these goals and achieve the community vision. The action cycle is the final phase and it is broken

into three categories: planning, implementation, and evaluation. Planning involves creating a

committee or group to oversee the implementation as well as coming up with realistic and

measurable objectives to observe during the implementation. The implementation stage involves

looking at potential actions and finding ways to work with the local health systems to increase

efficiency, as well as monitoring the actions as they are taking place. Finally, the evaluation

process involved picking out questions to use when evaluating the success of the project,

ensuring to use evidence when making evaluations, and creating methods for the information to

be shared with the community and all of its participants. (MAPP Framework)
Bibliography

MAPP Framework. (n.d.). Retrieved September 30, 2014.