Once a plan of what type of awareness raising initiative is made, it is time to take action and implement the plan.
At this stage in the process, it is important to have both good management of the resources and clear communication about what is happening with the involved stakeholders.
Pilot interventions
No matter how much you follow the guidance given in this Toolbox, it is difficult to know how well an implementation will go in real life. Unforeseen problems can arise and the needs or resources can rapidly change. By piloting a strategy with the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle, the campaign organizers can test the impact of theory put into practice, make adaptations and then later scale up successful interventions.
Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA):
P: Plan – prepare an action plan for implementation
D: Do – trial the actions in a specific unit or area, or with a certain group of patients
S: Study – compare the baseline and progress measures
A: Act – take action depending on the results. Continue with the trial in one unit or spread your implementation plan to other areas
Scale up interventions
Pilot projects can be scaled up in time, size or breadth of their reach. The length of time can be extended, a project can be implemented in additional places, or target people or personnel that were not included in the first approach. Challenges can arise when scaling up interventions that maybe did not exist in the original iteration. As with any implementation, the context and setting should always be considered and adjustments made appropriately.
Selected Resources
| Resource | Description |
| A guide to implementing the community dialogue approach | Guidance for health programme implementers on using the community dialogue approach – a participatory approach for community engagement with the aim to achieve and sustain social action and behavior change towards improving health of communities. Developed by the Malaria Consortium. Also available in French. |
| How to Improve: Model for improvement | Framework to guide and accelerate improvement in health care, without replacing existing change models that organizations may already use (Institute for Healthcare Improvement). |
| Nine steps for developing a scaling-up strategy | Manual to facilitate systematic planning for scaling up of interventions (WHO). |