Modifying Access, Barriers, and Opportunities: Overview of Tactics for Modifying Access, Barriers, and Opportunities
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WHAT DO WE MEAN BY MODIFYING ACCESS, BARRIERS, AND OPPORTUNITIES?
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WHAT CONSTITUTES ACCESS TO COMMUNITY SERVICES?
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WHAT ARE THE BARRIERS TO ACCESS TO COMMUNITY SERVICES?
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WHAT DO WE MEAN BY OPPORTUNITIES FOR ACCESS TO SERVICES... AND FOR ACCESS TO OR USE OF UNSAFE OR UNHEALTHY BEHAVIORS OR CIRCUMSTANCES?
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WHAT TACTICS MIGHT BE USEFUL IN MODIFYING ACCESS, BARRIERS, AND OPPORTUNITIES?
When you begin an initiative or intervention, you have participants in mind. They may be members of a specific group – defined by geographic or language characteristics, by social or economic factors, or by needs – or participants may include all members of the community. In either case, your initiative or intervention is unlikely to be successful if your intended participants don’t get involved in it.
In other words, your effort will be fruitless unless participants have access to it. That doesn’t mean only physical access – being able to reach or get into a building, for instance – but informational, social, and psychological access as well. People have to know that what you’re offering exists, to see it as important to them, and to be willing to use it. In addition, the physical, social, and psychological barriers to their using it have to be reduced or eliminated, and their opportunities to use it have to be maximized. Otherwise, many of them will be shut out, a situation both unfair and contrary to your goals.
Chapter 23 is about ways to improve access – for specific groups or for everyone – to the services that enhance life in the community. Those services extend to products (medication, for instance), practices (daily exercise, voting), amenities (libraries, parks, etc.), information, and institutions (government, higher education). In this section, we’ll discuss what that means in general; the following sections will examine in detail a number of ways to reach the goal of improving access to service.
The following video on the obesity epidemic beautifully illustrates the importance of modifying access, barriers, and opportunities:
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY MODIFYING ACCESS, BARRIERS, AND OPPORTUNITIES?
Access to what? Barriers to what? Opportunities for what? What exactly are we talking about here?
ACCESS
In general terms, this chapter is about making sure that people who need them have the ability to take advantage of the full range of community services – health services, education, human services, recreation, the arts, etc. That’s what access to community services is. It includes the need for universal access to those things that contribute to a high quality of life in a community – decent employment, a healthy and enjoyable environment, participation in public issues, and responsive and honest government, to name a few. It encompasses access to healthy practices and products. And it also implies access to the information that will make much of this possible – information about nutrition, for example, about the positions of candidates, about the environmental effects of various courses of action.
BARRIERS
The barriers here are the conditions, policies, or attitudes that prevent or make difficult the use and enjoyment of these services, amenities, practices, products, and information, as well as those personal and social hurdles that many people have to surmount in day-to-day life.
OPPORTUNITIES
“Opportunities” is not simply another word for “access,” but refers to something slightly different. By making access easier, and by removing barriers, you can create more opportunities for people to use community services. Remember, however, that an opportunity is only the ability to take advantage of something: it’s up to the individual to decide whether to do it or not. You can create opportunities for people to further their education, to quit smoking, to train for jobs, or to become home owners; but you can’t guarantee that people will seize those opportunities, even with your encouragement.
MODIFYING ACCESS, BARRIERS, AND OPPORTUNITIES
To modify something is to change some aspect of it – here, we mean changing it for the better. That may mean increasing, decreasing, replacing, or removing it, depending upon what the goal is. In most of the cases here, we’ll be talking about increasing access and opportunities, and decreasing barriers, but there are large exceptions. Most communities, for instance, would want to limit access – especially for young people – to alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and handguns. A community health organization might want to find ways to decrease access to unhealthy foods and practices, in order to promote healthy lifestyles.
That community health organization might try to cut down on opportunities for people to eat junk food by convincing local stores to replace some of their chip and candy displays with healthier snacks – nuts and fruit, perhaps. By the same token, a group working on the reduction and prevention of youth violence could try to decrease opportunities for violence by installing more streetlights, encouraging people to be out on the streets in the evening, and organizing neighborhood patrols.
In all of these cases, barriers are being created, rather than being lifted, in order to make it more difficult for people to engage in unhealthy or dangerous practices. The ultimate goal, whether increasing or decreasing access, barriers, or opportunities, is change that leads to healthier communities and an enhanced quality of life for everyone.
In this section, we’ll look at access, barriers, and opportunities, and then discuss how they can be modified to help assure that enhanced quality of life.
More.
Access Checklist, Examples & PowerPoint.