The fourth stage of the Public Health Approach to Injury Prevention is implementation. Information collected in the planning stages (surveillance, determinants and interventions) are now brought together to implement an evidence-informed intervention. There may be many individuals and organisations involved in implementing an intervention, as an injury risk often needs to be addressed by multi-component interventions.
Planning an intervention
Having already defined the specific issue, target audience, aim, objectives and activities, you can now develop an action plan that outlines how you are going to allocate roles, responsibilities and resources to your intervention.
When managing your project, it is also important to; identify and mitigate risk, develop effective communication procedures and track the timeline of your project. Gantt charts are useful to assist with this process, providing a visual map of where your milestones are.
Implementing an intervention
Within your action plan you would have itemised all of your activities, now comes the time to action them. The document will provide task lists for all project team members and assist with monitoring how the implementation is progressing, however you may need to adapt the plan as the project roles out. For example, additional opportunities may naturally present themselves due to contextual factors or as a result of the success of the intervention and you may choose to action these opportunities.
The next stage of the Public Health Approach to Injury Prevention provides context around evaluating your intervention. A robust evaluation of your intervention will include the collection of process level results during the implementation of your intervention and therefore you may need to collect some data whilst implementing your intervention.
Sustainability
The sustainability of your project is a crucial consideration during the implementation of your intervention and should be considered throughout the whole project’s duration. Effective forward planning will ensure clarity is gained on how the intervention will be incorporated into the organisation and ensure effectiveness in its ongoing delivery. Additionally, by continuously assessing the value of continuing the intervention, it will assist in determining whether or not the intervention should be discontinued.
