Scenario
You have recently joined Esperanza Community Health Center (Esperanza CHC), a nonprofit community health center that works with underserved populations in the border regions of southwest Arizona. Your supervisor has asked you to hit the ground running and create a communication plan that addresses one of four issues identified by the clinic as a priority for public health outreach. You have been informed that the plan will have a budget of $10,000.
Directions
To inform your work, your supervisor has provided you with a brief summarizing the results of a community health needs assessment (CHNA). This brief contains information on the demographics of the county and community served by Esperanza Community Health Center and identifies four key priorities for communications outreach, as determined by the CHNA. Your supervisor has tasked you with selecting one of these key priorities and creating a communication plan to address that need.
- Part 1: Draft communication plan: Your supervisor has left it to you to determine the format of your draft communication plan. However, your plan should address each of the following elements:
- Every communication plan involves key stakeholders, the people and groups of people who are responsible for both enacting the communication and receiving the communication. In your plan, begin by using the information provided to define key stakeholders of the communication plan, both internal and external.
- Once you have identified project stakeholders, define the objectives of the communication plan, including the target audience(s) for your communication project. These objectives should involve one of the four communication priorities identified by the CHNA and should be aligned with Esperanza CHC’s vision, mission, and values statements.
- Once the objectives have been determined, outline strategies to support the goals of the communication plan and describe the implementation tactics (or steps) of the communication plan. These implementation steps should also include appropriate media channels for reaching targeted audiences.
- Following the strategy and tactics of your communication plan, describe evaluation metrics for measuring the efficacy of the communication project. These metrics should give you sufficient detail to measure whether or not your communication plan has reached its stated objectives.
- Part 2: Cover memo: As you are drafting your communication plan, it comes to your attention that Esperanza CHC does not have a style guide and that many of your colleagues, especially your supervisor, seem to lack an understanding of the concept of a corporate/organizational voice. In order to build awareness of these concepts, you want to include some brief descriptions of these concepts, in the hope that Esperanza CHC will start to build its organizational brand and corporate voice. Additionally, you want to be explicit in connecting the vision, mission, and values of Esperanza CHC to your communication plan. In your cover memo, be sure to address the following elements:
- Using the vision, mission, and values statements provided by your supervisor, outline how the communication plan is aligned to the vision, mission, and values of the healthcare organization.
- As a communications professional, you understand the importance of establishing and maintaining a consistent organizational voice. Your memo should define the characteristics of a corporate voice and explain how a corporate voice is constructed, as well as describe the function of a style guide and how it reinforces the organizational brand.
What to Submit
Draft Communication Plan with Cover Memo
Create a 1,000–1,200 word draft communication plan, with a cover memo, that addresses one of the key communication needs identified by Esperanza Community Health Center’s CHNA.
Sources
This document contains information on the vision, mission, and values of Esperanza Community Health Center. Additionally, this document contains a summary of a recent community health needs assessment (CHNA), identifying key areas for Esperanza CHC’s communication priorities.
An-Sofie Claeys,
Better safe than sorry: Why organizations in crisis should never hesitate to steal thunder,
Business Horizons,
Volume 60, Issue 3,
2017,
Pages 305-311,
ISSN 0007-6813,
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681317300034)
Sethi, D., & Rani, M. K. (2017). Communication Barrier in Health Care Setting as Perceived by Nurses and Patient. International Journal of Nursing Education, 9(4), 30–35.
Kreps, G. L. (2014). Evaluating Health Communication Programs to Enhance Health Care and Health Promotion. JOURNAL OF HEALTH COMMUNICATION, 19(12), 1449–1459.
Allison, J. (2017). A VISION STATEMENT TAXONOMY: LINKING STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT, STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION, AND ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE. Global Journal of Management and Marketing, 1(2), 1+
https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/participation/promoting-interest/communication-plan/main Chapter 6 Section 1.
Sethi, A., & Adhikari, B. (2012). Impact of Communicating “Vision” on Organizational Communication Effectiveness. International Journal of Marketing & Business Communication, 1(3), 43–48.
Kenneth D. Plowman & Christopher Wilson (2018) Strategy and Tactics in Strategic Communication: Examining their Intersection with Social Media Use, International Journal of Strategic Communication, 12:2, 125-144, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1553118X.2018.1428979
Brookes, G., & Harvey, K. (2015). Peddling a semiotics of fear: a critical examination of scare tactics and commercial strategies in public health promotion. SOCIAL SEMIOTICS, 25(1), 57–80.
O’Sullivan, K.J. (2007), “Creating and executing an internal communications plan for knowledge management systems deployments”, Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 11 No. 2, pp. 102-108.
Johnson, J. D. (2017). Framing interprofessional team collaborative information seeking in health care settings. Information Services & Use, 37(1), 33–47.
Olga, M., & Matthias, W. (2017). Communication Management Tools for Managing Projects in an Intercultural Environment. Project Management Development – Practice & Perspectives, 159–170.
Nembhard, Ingrid M.; Yuan, Christina T.; Shabanova, Veronika; Cleary, Paul D.. The relationship between voice climate and patients’ experience of timely care in primary care clinics. Health Care Management Review 40(2):p 104-115, April/June 2015.
Omar Gómez, Javier Ortiz,
Modeling the Organizational Style Structure in Five,
Procedia Technology,
Volume 7,
2013,
Pages 384-390,
Groysberg, B., Lee, J., Price, J., & Cheng, J. Y.-J. (2018). The leader’s guide to corporate culture: how to manage the eight critical elements of organizational life. Harvard Business Review, 96(1), 44.
Desai, V. M. (2018). Third-Party Certifications as an Organizational Performance Liability. Journal of Management, 44(8), 3096–3123. (pp. 3117–3121)
