Planning and Evaluation Framework - PLAN

The PLAN phase includes 4 stages. Below is an overview of each. Each stage has a corresponding stage guide that can be be opened by selecting the stage title's buttons or the title of the brief description. 

Pre-Planning

Tools

Situational Assessment

In this stage you will gather information from a variety of evidence sources including existing data, stakeholders and research literature to describe the public health need.  This will provide a thorough understanding of the public health issue from different perspectives. This can be an iterative process, you may need to go back and collect more information as you work through this stage.

1. Engage core stakeholders
2. Assess the public health need
3. Consult research evidence & experts
4. Describe community context & political climate
   a. Understand stakeholder perspectives
   b. Identify community assets and gaps
   c. Assess political preferences
5. Identify target populations and priority populations

Tools

Identify Effective Strategies

In this stage you will determine the most effective public health strategies/interventions that could be used to address the identified public health need in the selected population(s). Using quality evidence to identify strategies will support the selection of interventions that have been shown to work.

1. Consider possible public health interventions:
   a. Mandate review
   b. Literature scan
   c. Environmental scan
2. Identify the level of rigor required for literature review (under development)
3. Complete literature review
4. Check-in with priority population/target population

Tools

Integrate Evidence and Apply Expertise

In this stage you will bring together the information you gathered in Situational Assessment and Identify Effective Strategies. After integrating the evidence that you gathered, consider internal capacity and the resources available and then develop your recommendations. Using your public health expertise, consider how these recommendations fit the local context. We need to integrate all sources of evidence to propose recommendations to address the identified public health need.  This will ensure resources are allocated to strategies/interventions that will have a positive impact in the community.  Applying your public health expertise will help assess the fit of the proposed recommendations to the internal and external context. This stage is a crucial step in supporting management to make evidence-informed decisions.

1. Integrate evidence
   a. Situational Assessment
   b. Identify Effective Strategies
2. Apply public health expertise
3. Consider internal capacity and resources
4. Finalize recommendations

Tools