AlleganySpeaks.com Community Engagement

Action Group Help

Hello! Welcome to a planning tool action group - a place where everyone can transparently come together to organize around a topic of interest. Some action groups are performance-oriented and have data points they are tracking, while others are designed to simply raise awareness. Regardless of the type of action group, all are designed to be solution-focused and can be created by a community member, or agency lead.

There are lots of features in an action group, but you don’t have to use them all. Below are quick feature descriptions:

Help

When you need a quick reminder of what a feature does in an action group, check the list below.

Home

Is the main part of the group where you can see all the icons and access the “feed” - a running list of what has taken place in the group.

Strategy

Here you can set a goal for the work you’re doing around a topic. You can also identify the strategies you’ll be implementing to achieve your goal.

Level of Change

This feature allows you to categorize the type of effort being accomplished in the action group. A drop down menu presents three choices: Program, Policy, or Systems change. When considering the level of change being sought, choose the line of best fit.

Primary Focus Area

This area describes the broad efforts our community has chosen, most likely based on the data presented in the Community Health Assessment. The health improvement work captured in the planning tool is categorized broadly in this section. Each focus area should be thoughtfully curated based on the data, partnerships, and funding climate in the community and be broad enough to include a variety of improvement efforts.

Data Category Tag

This is a general level of action group categorization. This feature is helpful with performance management and quality improvement as a way to categorize efforts to improve community health.

Strategic Alignment

An additional element to thoughtfully consider as you embark on an improvement effort, this section helps us identify if the work we are recording in the action group aligns with the overall mission of the organization and can be tied back to the strategic plan, if applicable.

Estimated Implementation Date

When does your health improvement effort begin?

Estimated Completion Date

When does your health improvement effort end?

Estimated Ease of Implementation

Consider how difficult the health improvement work will be to implement.

Estimated Cost of Implementation

Consider how expensive the health improvement work will be to implement.

Estimated Potential Community Benefit

Consider the potential impact of this effort in community health.

Health Equity

Capture ways you and your partners have considered health equity in this effort.

Research

List any evidence-based research, or best practices utilized to justify the health improvement work.

Raw Data +

You can set your own measures, target goals, trends, and identify the contributor that inputs the data. This is designed to track numerical data points on a monthly basis. This section is helpful as multiple agencies, non-profits, and community organizations work on projects and initiatives to affect change in our community.

Data Narrative

Provide additional information about the measures your action group is tracking. This is also a great place to explain acronyms and data sources.

Data Visualizations

These are dynamic visualizations that are automatically constructed as action groups input data.

Performance

Consistently tracks data points over time with scaled data visualizations. These features are integrated with each action group, creating a seamless process for performance review.

QI

Tracks quality improvement strategies and objectives, automatically pulling data from action groups in an automated process. Forms are provided for multiple cycles of QI, utilizing the Plan-Do-Check-Act four-stage problem-solving model, to enable organizations to continually improve processes, products or services.

Time-Frame Targets

For performance-oriented groups that want to track data in topics that have been identified as priorities for community health improvement work and have measurable objectives. This section creates another level of accountability by including specific time-frames pulled from specific objectives indicated in the action group. This section is fully integrated with our performance management system.

CHIP Dash

Once an action group is considered viable for inclusion in the Community Health Improvement Plan, this feature is turned on by the site administrator, if applicable. The action group is given a CHIP friendly title and a description is written as a summary of the efforts that is appropriate for the larger audience reviewing the Community Health Improvement Plan.

Funding

Coordinate, track and report funding progress for improvement work.

Location

Identify the geographical location where the health improvement work is occurring.

+ More

Planning tool sites may have additional features, such as collaborative wikis, document uploads, etc… Please reach out to this site’s administrator for additional information on site-specific features.

Thank you for using the planning tool. We hope that this tool brings as much to your community as it has to ours.