Health Promotion Reflection Week

During this reflection week in MHST 631, I reflected on our learnings so far in the course and why I find health promotion so captivating. During the first 8 weeks of this course, we learned numerous concepts that I did not know. The learning resources and the activities generated interesting thoughts and conversations.

My most captivating learning during unit 1 was the concept of the coin model (Nixon, 2019; Nixon, 2021; Nixon, 2020). I had never seen minorities and majorities as being part of one entity and this seriously challenged my perspective of inequalities. 

For unit 2, most of the concepts I was familiar with since I had studied them at the bachelor's level. The World Health Organization's Agenda for Sustainable Development (2016) reminded me how nothing was more important than people's health. It also reminded me how everything was related to individual health, from day-to-day, politics to the health of the planet. 

During unit 3, we saw different health promotion theories and models. I found the health belief model interesting. The four key constructs of this model show the importance of creating a realistic perspective of threat in populations for them to perceive the threat to modify behaviour (Rideout, 2015). However, Kozica & al., (2014) reminded us how challenging it could be to translate evidence-based health promotion into the real world. 

Unit 4 underlined how rapid access to information (and misinformation!) can influence people's decisions over their health. This is an issue that is very applicable to my generation. During that week, I exchanged interesting ideas with Maggie surrounding the impact of podcasts and famous podcasters such as Joe Roggan with Maggie. I concluded how difficult it could be to manage the overwhelming amount of misinformation in all media. 

Thus, I always found health promotion so fascinating. We have the resources and tools to live a healthy lifestyle, why do most people struggle to do so? We know the threats that surround sedentary lifestyles and other unhealthy behaviours, thus, why do so many people struggle to meet the basic health recommendations? This course has shed light on what causes people to struggle to have a healthy lifestyle. Numerous of the learning resources, activities and forum exchanges have been great eye-openers for me. 

References

Kozica, S. L., Lombard, C. B., Hider, K., et al. (2014). Developing comprehensive health promotion evaluations: A methodological review. MOJ Public Health, 1(1), 39–48. https://doi.org/10.15406/mojph.2014.01.00007

Nixon, S. A. (2019). The coin model of privilege and critical allyship: Health implications. BMC Public Health, 19(1), 1-13. https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s12889-019-7884-9.pdf

Nixon, S. (2020, October 6). Understanding the role of privilege in relation to public health ethics and practice. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/a30a_NiT5zc *Required

Length 10:19

Nixon, S. (2021, November 11). Tips for effective èallyship [Video]. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/644652449/644179039 

Rideout, C. (2015, Dec 21). FNH 473 Video 1: Introduction to Health Behaviour Theories [Video].

YouTube. https://youtu.be/OexKKEUIgSU

Length: 12:34

World Health Organization. (2016). Shanghai Declaration on promoting health in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-NMH-PND-17.5