Develop a Food Service Guidelines Implementation Work Plan
Now that you have a team and a goal, you can develop your work plan for implementing food service guidelines. A logic model can provide direction and help you determine the activities needed to make progress. Logic models can be used as both strategic planning tools and evaluation tools.
Developing Your Food Service Guidelines Logic Model
A good logic model will identify inputs; activities; outputs; short-term, intermediate-term, and long-term outcomes; and external factors that may influence the outcomes. In the planning stage, you can use the logic model to engage leaders and other decision-makers, internal champions, and key partners. Seek their feedback on the following questions:
- What does the program need? The needs are the inputs for the logic model and include resources, contributions, and investments.
- What does the program do? Defining this will give you the activities for the logic model and their resulting outputs. In other words, these are the actions you will take (activities) and the immediate products or results of that activity (outputs). For example, the action may be to formulate a policy requiring food service guidelines and the output is that agencies adopt a food service guidelines policy.
- Who or what will change because of the program? Defining this will provide your short-term, intermediate-term, and long-term outcomes. For example, implementing food service guidelines will improve healthy food offerings (short-term outcome), increase healthier food purchases (intermediate-term outcome) and contribute towards improved health (long-term outcome).
- What external or contextual factors may influence your ability to achieve your outcomes? These are the factors that influence the outcomes that are not due to your initiative. Examples include environmental factors, political context, and social determinants of health.
Examples of Work Plan Goal, Objective, and Strategy
Goal: Improve the health of state government employees by creating a food environment in which the healthy choice is also the easy choice.
Objective: All vending machines, snack bars, and cafeterias on state properties will comply with the Food Service Guidelines for Federal Facilities pdf icon[PDF-3.34MB] within two years.
Strategy: Adopt and implement food service guidelines in all settings that provide food and beverages.
A sample logic model in Smart Food Choices: How to Implement Food Service Guidelines in Public Facilities pdf icon[PDF-3.47MB] can be used for your planning. The logic model shows the processes and outcomes for implementing food service guidelines for food sold in government work sites and other public facilities in the community. Many components of the example apply to other settings.
Developing Your Food Service Guidelines Work Plan
You can use the planning logic model to guide the development of your work plan, which further defines how, when, and what will be done in a set time frame to accomplish your program goals and objectives. The work plan includes goals, objectives, strategies, and time-phased action steps. It also identifies resources and responsible individuals, groups, or organizations. When you develop a work plan with your team, it is easy to illustrate shared goals, activities, and the contributions everyone makes in implementing the proposed food service guidelines. You can use the fillable Food Service Guidelines Work Plan pdf icon[PDF-229KB] to plan your initiative.
