The social, economic and political effects that alcohol and drug addiction bring on an individual are an issue of concern for the person, their families and even society. Consequently, efforts to mitigate such effects spearheaded by an organization need to acknowledge the community’s role therein if it seeks to succeed. Interventions to help addicts recover require the assistance of local community members with whom the addicts live. Not only do they have 24-hour access to the addict, the community understands those addicts and therefore, can effectively reach them. Community outreach programs are also effective in cutting the access that these addicts have to drugs and bear the potential of actually reaching these addicts.
Regarding policy development on matters of addiction intervention, OAI needs community engagement to establish sustainable means of dealing with addiction. In most cases, non-profit organizations rely on locals to carry out various activities that constitute the programs they institute. Project mobilizers, evaluators and campaigners all come from the local community. Therefore, engaging members increase their participation and reduce their resistance to the program, instantly improving their success chances. For OAI, the other reason for engaging locals stems from the need to diversify proposal for solutions to get the best results possible. It allows for the incorporation of different perspectives, enriching the intervention process.
Performance measures in public healthcare points to the results obtained by specific measures that an institution embraces in realizing its objectives within society. As an institution of repute, OAI seeks to quantify its progress and make necessary adjustments to increase its efforts. In evaluating its progress, the company looks into the financial input and the results it produces, the health status of the addicts they serve and the capacity they hold to serve in terms of jurisdiction and numbers. Consequently. OAI seeks to establish whether or not the measures they have undertaken to help more addicts in the specified area code are working or there is need to rethink the strategy that they have been applying in that area.
Unlike corporate organizations that evaluate their financial performance via output, social entities like OAI look into how the finances at their disposal can eve their needs. For the project herein, the determination that the funds set aside for the area I adequate for that area or is found to be excessive is regarded as a success. However, the inability of said funds to serve the specified area is a failure. Regarding other perspectives, increased awareness of the organization’s activities, measured by the number of addicts showing up for rehabilitation or volunteers who come to help, larger numbers translate to success. Scope too largely depends on the population of the addicts and volunteers who show up. However, evaluators may resort to quickfire interviews within a set boundary to establish whether or not people have encountered or acquainted themselves to the organization, also another way of establishing performance success.
Public health leaders have diverse challenges in discharging their mandates, owing to the large populations they re responsible and the limited personnel at their disposal. While personnel shortage remains to be a primary challenge for public health leaders in their duties, other hurdles to effective service providers continue to emerge. For OAI, community hostility towards strangers continues to be a burden since it stands in the way of open and honest engagements with the people they serve. Also, most addicts are estranged from their families and friends following a spate of unsustainable behaviour leading to the absence of a viable support network during their recovery, undermining all that OAI tries to do.
While the occurrences of challenges during professional undertakings re common, these challenges to a public health manager interferes with the progress of the program in various ways, for starters, the absence of adequate financial resources limits the scope of operations of the program, ensuring that the impact of the program is limited to a few neighbourhoods. Also, the absence of trust between the locals and OAI personnel creates an environment of dishonesty, which makes it more difficult for the organization to operate due to the existing information gap. In addition to this challenge, the inadequate workforce reduces the program’s ability to reach its target population in a meaningful manner, creating difficulties in continuity for the recovered addicts.
Though profound, the effects of such challenges are subject to certain mitigation effects by the management even though such measures are likely to entail complex solutions. The challenges that the institution faces regarding ridding the society of the ills associated with addiction could be classified into three broad summarizations: financial inadequacies, personnel shortages, and hostile community interactions. In seeking ways to manage performance measures, a public health manager ought to focus on each problem independently and seek out the solutions as such. With regards to financial inadequacies, reducing operational expenses is the way to go for the project manager. It could be achieved through reduced area coverage, although that is a negative action. Other options include expanding the volunteers’ quota, incorporating locals into the process and seeking cheaper materials for operations.
Financial challenges exhibited in the project could also be solved by increasing the number of partners with which OAI works to reduce alcohol and drug addiction within a community. Through partnerships with organizations such as AA and DEA, the institution could find logistical and personnel support, all of which contribute to reducing expenses that the institution incurs. The program’s public health manager could also authorize various community awareness instances to raise its product’s goodwill. In this way, the program could encourage voluntary participation and interaction, solving two problems in the process. One, the volunteers would address personnel shortages as there will be increased recruitment of personnel without additional financial commitments. Two, it would drastically improve community relationships with the team, improving internetworking and sharing information, which is helpful for the program.