The boring project stuff: gaining insights and bringing things together

The scene’s been set (see: https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/middle-aged-mens-mental-health-forums-new-project-chris-stein?trk=prof-post) and there’s a proposed solution (see: https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/how-mens-health-forums-project-supporting-middle-aged-chris-stein?trk=prof-post), now there’s a need to bring it together.

Governance

Ensuring that a project of this nature receives the attention it deserves, is imperative, and while the project team carry a significant load in terms of delivery, there is always a need for guidance from other sources.

Establishing a project advisory group (PAG) was a first item after winning the grant for the project and due consideration had to be given to the individuals, their experiences, and the roles of people approached to participate in the PAG. Given the nature of Beat Stress, Feel Better, there was a desire to engage mental health professionals, those with experience of digital health provision, individuals with an understanding of the links between wellbeing and mental health and representation of the target group. Bringing together a breadth of experience and backgrounds, personal and professional was important in considering the formation of the PAG.

The PAG holds a number of functions, not least of which is to act as a sounding board and guidance point for the project team. After the completion of various activities it has been necessary to gain perspective on them by sharing the information with the PAG members, reflecting on the implications of outcomes, articulating challenges and sticking points and considering the next steps.

Building stakeholder relationships with organisations and individuals ensures the project has the ear of others interested in the project from the perspective of influence, outcomes or supporting members/clients. The PAG has been able to support the development and strengthening of those relationships, thereby extending the reach of the project.

Beyond all other responsibilities, the PAG has ensured that the project team does not forget the core focus: supporting the mental health of men, particularly those in their middle-years.

Stakeholder Engagement

The term ‘stakeholder’ can mean different things to different people. To clarify what it means to this project, it is organisations and individuals with an interest in the project. This could be men, their friends and families, organisations that work with men, those interested in digital health, and those working in mental health. Kind of vast really!

Communicating across such a diverse set of interested parties requires exploring different communication channels. Some prefer face-to-face meetings, others phone calls or emails, some prefer blog posts but the key is to be clear and concise. It is important to articulate what the project is in terms of aims and objectives, why the project has a particular focus, the process that will be followed, how the interested parties can support and to find areas of mutual benefit.

Focus Groups

The project is about supporting men, therefore their voice MUST be at the core of the service. To hear that voice, focus groups have been conducted to gain insights on a variety of topics such as thoughts, opinions and understanding of various terms such as ‘stress’, ‘anger’, ‘mental health’ and ‘wellbeing’. In the field of digital health and the abbreviated time digital services have for engaging service users, having an insight into language is important. In fact it’s not just important; it’s vital. Use the wrong word, say the wrong thing and the potential to offer support might vanish.

Groups of men, from various backgrounds, have been brought together to work through terminology, imagery and what barriers might exist that need to be removed to increase uptake. The group have been engaged in supporting and defining what potential service users want to see? What images will engage? What terms are off-putting? What are people’s experience of online health? Benchmarking this understanding and then testing against it will lead to the development of the best possible service.

Focus groups do not just happen and they are not just successful because they do happen. Thought has to be put into the questions to put in front of the group. What insights are being searched for? How many are you able to run? Who is best placed to run them? Sometimes the project manager is too close to the project and/or does not have the right personality to run a focus group successfully. How will the facilitator build engagement within the groups? How is the information to be captured and analysed? These questions do not address the when, where or how does one ensure participation so the process of building, facilitating, capturing, analysing and reporting the focus groups is one that requires detailed thought.

Environment Scanning

Before launching into the project, the team undertook an environmental scan of existing online services to see what was being offered and how the project might stand in the space. The scan included looking at services offered in America, Australia and the UK. We also wanted to understand what nuances in service provision were interesting and could be adopted and adapted to create the best service offer possible.

A key to conducting an environment scan is knowing what your service is. This might sound really basic but it is highly feasible to get caught up in what is being offered more broadly and forget what your offer is, thereby taking away from the focus of the scan.

We wanted to know what other services were offering: one-to-one support; video conferencing; was the service clinically lead? Was their a peer-to-peer offer? Who was their target audience and who were they reaching? Where there potential barriers to access such as limited by geography or was it a paid-for service? What personal data is requested and how is it collected? Armed with this information, the position of the project became clearer and supported the communication strategy. As you might imagine, however, the field of digital health is broad and changes perpetually, only increasing the need to be clear on what our offer is.

Evaluation and dissemination

Starting with the end in mind supports building the components of the project towards a tangible end that will result in a service of high quality that can be spoken about and woven into a developing fabric of digital health support.

To achieve this, there is a need to investigate the various methods that could be adopted to evaluate such a service. There are quantifiable objectives around numbers of service users and their profiles while also gaining an understanding of the benefits to service users and stakeholder organisations. The travels of the project team have unearthed some challenges in evaluating digital health services such as measuring a user’s journey and tracking service users from an online environment to an offline one. How to collect pre- and post-service user data to measure impact, is a significant challenge because putting in surveys before and after use would put in a barrier to access that would likely impact uptake. How do you know if people who come to the service implement the advice received or go to a service they are signposted to, especially in a way that does not rely on a person filling in a survey and stating what they think you might want to hear? These are very large questions that the wider field is grappling with.

There we have it, a series of evolving challenges, competing needs and variety of communication channels.

In the next installment I will be spelling out how YOU are able to support this project to be the best offer possible.