Making Change Happen

Interventional programmes in various world locations (Campaign objective 3) aim to put in place health-care solutions, in the form of effective and cost-effective headache services.

Strategic approach to effective intervention

Interventions must address the problem of headache as it exists locally. Whether they require the planning and implementation of new headache services, or can be achieved through improvement of those that currently exist, the aim must be to create the best services possible.

First and absolutely, this requires local champions. Second it requires agreement upon the desired and achievable objectives – which should be based on local needs assessment – and upon local priorities.

Capacity-building of doctors, especially in primary care, is a necessary part of most interventional projects and requires integrated educational initiatives.

Measuring the effect of interventions is methodologically challenging but necessary, ideally done in terms of outcomes (reductions in population burden attributable to headache). The final step in any intervention, if evaluation indicates this to be necessary, is to revise and re-apply the modified interventions in plan-do-study-act cycles using standard management-of-change methodology.

There are two essential elements to effective and cost-effective headache services:

  1. efficient and equitable service organization and delivery;
  2. evaluation of service quality – which requires knowing what quality is, and how to measure it.

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