Developmental Stages of Health Education in HMOs

With no standards for comparison, expectations for health education programs and judgments of their success are subjective. Regardless of initial differences in variables such as starting point of the program, resource allotment, and organizational characteristics and structures, all health education programs have some similar goals and development processes. The goals are: the need to establish long-term relationships, gain visibility, and appeal to the dominant domains within the organization in order to survive. An empirical three-stage model is proposed as a generic development process. The stages, formation, action, and stabilization, propose more sophisticated and complex programmatic content evolving as the initial strategic organizational issues are resolved.