¶ … Program to Promote Positive Health Behaviors
The screening practice for disease has been identified as an effective tool to save lives, reduce suffering and reduce health care costs. While a periodic screening for cervical and breast cancer has been identified as an effective tool in reducing a level of burden of disease in women, however, many screening practices fall short of a recommended practice thereby leaving patients to face unnecessary risks. Barriers to cancer screening exist at different levels at physician, patients and practice systems. The EWM (Every Woman Matter) is a state-organized program and federally-funded program to eliminate barriers to prevent cervical and breast cancer screening. The program focuses on raising public awareness on the risks associated to breast cancer and make the screening more accessible to all low-income women. The goal of the program is also to allow eligible women to receive a Papanicolaou smear test, mammography, and clinical breast examination at reduce costs.
Although, the EMW program intends to deliver health service for women, however, the level of cervical and breast cancer screening still fall short of the ideal. Numerous attempts to enhance a preventive service delivery deliver no magic bullet to change practice and physician behaviors.
Objective of this paper is to investigate the reason the Every Woman Matter was not effective. The paper also identifies two successful programs for the cancer screening and characteristics that made the programs effective.
Reasons the EMW Program had not met its Goals
Different factors have prevented the EMW not being able to meet their goals. The financial reason is one of the major factors that makes the program not be able to realize its goals. Typically, the program targets women with low incomes, and by consequence, these group of women are unable to afford the high costs of regular medical checkups. Moreover, millions of low income women...
The costs of screening the breast cancer have prevented many low income women from carrying out the screening until the disease have been developed in the woman body. In the United States, people who lack the health insurance face the risks of developing chronic disease because they will not be able to afford a regular medical checkup.
"Health insurance status is a critical factor in determining access to care and health outcomes for women with breast cancer. Women without health insurance are less likely to receive mammogram screening services compared to those who are insured." (Vann, & Julie, 2011 p 97).
While the EWM attempted to bridge the gap by taking preventive health measures for low income women, nevertheless, the program is unable to meet its goals since it records no objective feedback from the program's support staff. Without feedback from the program support staff, it will be challenging to identify the problems associated with its implementation, and address the shortcomings. Backer, Geske, McIlvain et al. (2005) point out that many physicians in the rural hospitals were less enthusiastic about the program and without the support of physicians for a health promotion program, a program may not effectively improved.
Lack of financial and human resources for its implementation is another problem that hinders an effective implementation of the EMW. (Shi, & Singh, 2010). Typically, an effective implementation of a program requires an integration of human and financial resources. The EMW fails to raise adequate human and financial resources for the implementation since it…
