An evaluation of health planning in the Mount Rogers and New River Valley Planning Districts

Abstract

The underlying hypothesis of this paper is that health planning in Virginia has not achieved its full potential. The health planning activities in the Mount Rogers and the New River Valley Planning Districts are evaluated using the criteria of cooperation. Although a number of criteria are appropriate for use in the evaluation procedure, cooperation is used because it is one of the present methods to achieve national health goals. Cooperation is too general a term to be directly applied, so sub-criteria are determined to measure the cooperative effort. The sub-criteria include: (1) lack of conflict; (2) intergovernmental agreements; (3) functional integration; (4) communication; (5) elimination of duplicated efforts; (6) consensus of values; and (7) effect of personalities. The discussion centers around the differences between the cooperative style of planning used in the Mount Rogers Planning District and the coordinative style of planning of the New River Valley Planning District. Recommendations are proposed to combine the benefits of both styles of planning.