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		Getting Started
		Developing a Strategic Plan
		Identifying the Problem
		Describing the Problem
		Analyzing the Problem
		Planning the Solution
		Implementing the Solution
		Monitoring/Evaluating the Solution

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		Developing Strategies Tools: Affinity Technique

Creating the Vision Statement

Mrs. Alvarez now asks the team to consider what the health center's vision statement should be. The vision statement is what members of the community imagine that the health center could be, under the best of circumstances. This is especially important now, given that the community's population has grown tremendously in the past ten years. The team will work together with some of the center's users (the external users) to write this statement. The tool they will use is the Affinity Technique, which is a consensus-building technique that can help systematize brainstorming. Once the vision statement is created by the users, the team will write the mission statement for the clinic.

Using the Affinity Technique

Mrs. Alvarez asks for two volunteers from the Quality Improvement team to facilitate the use of the Affinity Technique with the health center's users. Mrs. Gutierrez and Mr. Y volunteer. After discussing the technique with Mrs. Alvarez, they select a group of seven health center users. They meet with them as a group and ask them to consider the following question, and then write their answers down on separate cards. If the users aren't able to write, they are asked to draw a simple picture instead.

If you could imagine an ideal health center, what would it be like? What services would be offered? What would the building, the staff, and the services be like?

After the group finishes, Mrs. Gutierrez and Mr. Y ask the users to pin their cards up on the wall. They ask the users to help organize the cards into categories and re-group the cards according to their ideas until a consensus is reached.

Mrs. Gutierrez then summarizes the central idea of each group of cards into one short phrase. These phrases together formulate the vision statement.

The Vision Statement according to the users is:

"A health center that serves the local community sensitively, with well-trained, motivated, friendly, and respectful personnel, offering services for basic health care that are of low cost, with a flexible schedule, in a pleasing environment."

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