At a glance
Once you have done your assessment, identified your food service guidelines team, and selected your setting, you can develop your work plan for implementing food service guidelines. A logic model can help you develop your work plan by providing direction and determining the activities needed to make progress.
Developing your logic model
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 and evaluation tools. A good logic model will identify:
- Inputs.
- Activities.
- Outputs.
- Short-term, intermediate-term, and long-term outcomes.
- 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, coalitions, and key partners. Seek their feedback on the following questions to inform your logic model:
What resources are needed for the activities?
The program needs are the inputs for the logic model. These include resources, coalition 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. The output would be agency adoption a food service guidelines policy.
Who or what will change because of the program?
Defining these things 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 may influence your ability to achieve your outcomes?
These are the external or contextual factors that influence the outcomes that are not due to your initiative. Examples include environmental issues, political context, and social factors that influence health.
Logic Model Example for Food Service Guidelines
Developing your work plan
You can use the planning logic model to develop your work plan. The work plan will define how, when, and what will be done 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. The work plan creates an easy way to illustrate shared goals, activities, and team members' contributions. You can use the fillable Food Service Guidelines Work Plan to plan your initiative.
Examples of Work Plan Goal, Objective, and Strategy
Objective: All vending machines, snack bars, and cafeterias on state properties will comply with the Food Service Guidelines for Federal Facilities within two years.
Strategy: Adopt and implement food service guidelines in all settings that provide food and beverages.
Next steps
Return to "Building Blocks"
Use the "Building Blocks of Food Service Guidelines" to navigate to other parts of the Food Service Guidelines Implementation Toolkit.