HEALTH INTERVENTION PROGRAM

Health Intervention Program

Health Intervention Program

Introduction

The paper conducts a critical appraisal of the mental health intervention program in Oman. With the context of this program, the government of Oman came up with a comprehensive knowledge and awareness management program to control mental health issues and to increase the mental health awareness among the community since an early age.

Review of Literature

Crombie gives a comprehensive account of the critical appraisal in the pocket guide to critical appraisal: a handbook for health care professionals. According to Crombie, any critical appraisal follows answering some important questions that provides framework of understanding to the reader. These steps assist in the critical appraisal of the health science literature.

Greenhalgh, (2006) provide the evidence of the best medicine evidence practice in the book named How to read a paper: the basics of evidence based medicine. Greenhalgh's view is that the evidence based medicinal practice should be readable and readily available for the students and experienced professionals. The author explains the significance of the critical appraisal and the terms like need for treatment and how to search the literature.

According to Druss, Marcus (2005), practicing evidence based medicine is important to apply the findings of a particular intervention and program. The researchers therefore should be able to select and appraise the scientific literature that is suitable to their field. They need to understand the implications of the research findings for the community and establish an appropriate management plan by combining information.

According to Public Health Resource Unit, (2006, public intervention plan is a comprehensive social and political process that covers only actions directed at strengthening the skills and capacities of individuals, but also aimed at changing the social, environmental and economic, in order to mitigate its impact on public health and individual (p. 11). It is considered also a process that enables people to increase control over the determinants of health and thereby improve the community health.

Glasziou (2008) believes that critical appraisal of the health care interventions comprises of the application of rules of evidence of the study to analyse the data validity, procedures and methods, conclusions and compliance with the ethical standards. The rules can vary according to the circumstances whereas the methodology varies according to the general principles to its design.

According to Heller (2008), despite the availability of many documents to guide the critical appraisal process in public health interventions, there is no gold standard for an effective critical appraisal (p. 6). However, a structured approach towards the critical appraisal can improve the quality of this process and planned checklists can be useful in screening out the research that is of low quality and of little relevance to the topic at hand.

Parkes (2005) emphasises that the scientific research is usually related to standing on a giant's shoulder as new knowledge and ideas are established depending on the previous work and the critical appraisal makes a new contribution to the knowledge that is of rare relativity but research that makes an incremental advance and can be of ...