Adolescent health promotion interests me, because adolescence is such a critical time for self-empowerment, self-realization, and behavior change. As I'm in the health promotion track, I'm very passionate about issues that can most easily be changed through interventions with youth, as their behaviors are much less ingrained than older populations. These issues include smoking cessation, reducing road traffic accidencts, nutrition, obesity, etc. Although I must admit that I'm nervous to attempt and reach out this population through our workshop in this class, I'm excited to learn practical methods to engage youth and foster healthy behavior changes. I also hope to learn how to bridge the gap between theory and practice! Although I have never conducted a workshop before, I hope that the classes I took in youth delinquency (undergrad), community psychology (grad), and program planning (grad) will add to discussions in class.
-Dana
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
What interested me about this course is two-fold. The first reason is not as deep or inspiring in that I needed another course to take during this summer to attain my full number of credits to graduate. Secondly, however, I was interested in taking this course from my work in HIV/AIDS. Seeing as how half of all new infections occur in adolescents (particularly those aged 15-24), that age group begs of being the focus for future work in turning the tide of the epidemic. Also, I have realized that depending on the age ranges within that group, a particular approach is needed that may not be suitable for the other age ranges.
Throughout the course of this class, I expect to learn strategies for engaging adolescents of different age categories. I hope to learn how best to reach youth in addressing issues related to behavior change and life-skills development. Even though I have worked with adolescents before, I hope to learn from others who've have done more extensive work than I: to hear of their challenges and methods of approaching difficult situations. Additionally, I have created a report for an AIDS organization overseas for how they can scale up their efforts in HIV prevention in youth. I expect to be able to modify and add to this report for that organization.
I have worked with adolescents before and expect to bring at the very least experiences, which, through group input, will provide real-world examples of strategies/approaches proposed in the course.
Post a Comment