2 Run Your Program

Once you have planned, what does it take to run a heart health program?

At this point, you have carefully planned your heart health program. You have decided what kind of program you want to run, understand the needs of the people you are recruiting, and have support and resources. You also have a plan in place for evaluating and sharing information about your program. Great! Now it is time to launch your heart health program.

If you have not done so already, set up a schedule that includes dates for

• Recruitment;
• Supervision and work with community health workers and other team members;
• Your sessions;
• Heart health guest speakers;
• Evaluation; and
• Update about your program with your team, organization leaders, stakeholders, and partners.

This will help you and your team to stay on track and know what is coming up each week.

After setting up a schedule, follow these steps:

• 2.1 Recruit. Learn how to find people to join your program by doing “behind the scenes” work. Learn how to plan your approach, conduct outreach, and use media and messaging. Check out Recruiting Scenarios (PDF, 229 KB) to see how it is done.
• 2.2 Keep people coming. People miss sessions or drop out of a program for many reasons. Learn how to avoid this and keep people coming to your program.
• 2.3 Adjust materials and add new ideas. Even though you now have your heart health program planned, you may find that you will need to change things as you go along. This could mean adjusting some of the heart health materials or adding new ideas. In this section, you will find ideas on how to do this and see examples.
• 2.4 Handle barriers. Learn what to do when barriers come up. These may be barriers that the people in your program, your team, or your organization experience.

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Last Updated: June 2014