EDS 143 Blog#10: My Final Reflections and Realizations

Health is the foundation of all living things on Earth. That being said, it is imperative to nourish, develop and further maximize our potential and capabilities as humans to fulfil our personal needs and wants while doing our part to the advancement of our society. Without a reliable foundation, our mind, emotion and body will just tumble down no matter how sharp and steady our resolve is.

The subject EDS 143 of Health Education of UP Open University had taught me many significant things and made me gained relevant insights that I can apply and connect to my daily activities at home and work (even at this mode of learning):

1. I learned in the initial phase of this course that health isn’t just the absence of any illnesses or diseases but a “state of complete physical, social and mental well-being” that allows a person to live his or her life to the fullest.” (Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, WHO, Geneva. 1986).
2. Health is a fundamental right that should be upheld by the people and the government especially. The government has a crucial role in ensuring that all its people should be provided and accorded with community and health programs and services to ensure human productivity and development.
3. One of my favourite learning from this course is that wellness and health has seven dimensions according to University of California, Riverside – physical, social, emotional, spiritual, environmental, occupational and intellectual. These dimensions should be nourished and taken care of equally since all are interconnected and interdependent with one another.
4. Health Belief Model (HBM) is a great strategy to use to educate, make people aware of the pros and cons of a program and empower them into action (info gathering, mobilization and assessment).
5. In planning a health program or health education, it is important to know the target audience and learners since each set or classification of population (people classified either according to common demography, needs and wants lifestyle, economic and financial capabilities, educational attainment etc.)  has their own distinct needs and characteristics that require specific health approach and intervention. What might be good to community A might not be to community B hence proper in-depth analysis and first-hand methodologies of assessment must be done to “prescribe” a fitting solution.
6. It is important to incorporate health education and curriculum in school (apart from the info dissemination by government, NGOs and private sectors) because Classroom (a typical and probably the greatest example where people converge to socialize and learn) is one of the places in our community where we spent considerable amount of time to meet and develop healthy relationship with our peers and teachers, learn new things and expand our current skill set, and the place where our capabilities are being challenged for us to grow as a mature and educated person. It is also a place and an environment where germs, virus and bacteria can spread easily because of the foot traffic present, rooms which are wet and humid (conducive for bacteria’s growth), varying weather affecting our physical health, lack of personal hygiene of some people, lack of measures and materials to promote cleanliness and other factors making school a cradle for diseases.
7. Emergency risk management is “everybody’s business” – There are many emergency preparedness and resiliency measures that require cooperation and connection between groups of people for it to be successful. In a bigger picture, a barangay or community’s emergency preparedness program will be effective if a notable number of houses will not follow proper garbage segregation, the pile of garbage accumulated from their home and other houses locate on adjacent barangay will contribute to flooding of their area. Everybody or majority should work hand-in-hand consistently and think these emergency risk measures and health guidelines as partnership or group work not as an individual effort.
8. In designing, implementing and assessing a health program, the PRECEDE – PROCEED model (Dr. Lawrence Green) will come very helpful since this participatory model provides a logical and organized structure that allows us to more likely develop a doable plan that addresses the laid specific issues. More importantly, it considers all the factors that affect the planning and execution phase of a health or community program.

EDS 143 Bllog #9: Evaluating a Health Program

Health programs are integral part of a community since these kinds of initiatives and movements help the people in attaining a better way of living and more important, effective health programs pave way to the continuous nourishment and development of a person’s physical, emotional and mental health. Without any health program, the workforce, the students and members of families may not maximize their productivity and may not fully harness the benefits and sources healthy lifestyle and healthy food thereby affecting academic performance, job output and social skills.

Moreover, a health program shouldn’t just target one dimension of health, since our needs and the environment that we have keeps on changing; a health program should be multimodal and encompassing to target the different health dimensions of a person – physical, mental/intellectual, emotional, occupational, social, environmental and spiritual. An effective health program shouldn’t just deliver a short-term effect but it should be practical and sustainable for it to create a long-term effect to the community. Also a health program should shape and develop personal value base and beliefs that will fuel the person to pursue a healthier way of life not just for him/her but also to the people around him/her. Last, a health program should encourage and induce cooperation, collaboration and lasting involvement

In this blog, I would like to evaluate holistically a health program in using the “7 Dimensions of Wellness” model by University of California, Riverside.  In particular, I would like to personally evaluate the “Feeding and Nutrition” program of Feed the Hungry, Inc.  (FtH). FtH is a non-profit organization that reaches out to the street children in the Philippines and provides them a complete and healthy meal during special occasions, now FtH has evolved into an organization (sending their gratitude to the sponsors and supporters locally and abroad) with programs supporting educational endeavours of poor children by providing scholarships and learning materials, livelihood and infrastructure programs, building classrooms, and medical/calamity assistance. For this output, I will be focusing on their “Feeding and Nutrition” program.

According to their website, the feeding program is “designed to provide supplemental food to malnourished children aged 6 and below.” The program includes one complete nutritious meal five days per week for a period of 16 months. The beneficiaries are evaluated and monitored every month to check progress in weight and height, and overall health condition.  This program is in collaboration with DSWD. Also, the program includes training for mothers on proper nutrition, appropriate care for their children and family planning. Mothers are tasked to do the marketing and cooking part of the program.

“From 2001 to present, FtH has provided PhP5,395,158.00 to fund 53 modules of feeding program benefiting at least 3,165 malnourished children. Ninety percent of the children who graduated from the program attained the normal level of nutrition after participating in their respective modules.”

7 Dimensions of Wellness	Does the program targets and nourished these dimensions? (Reference: http://feedthehungryphil.org/feeding-and-nutrition/)
Social Wellness is the ability to relate to and connect with other people in our world. Our ability to establish and maintain positive relationships with family, friends and co-workers contributes to our Social Wellness.	Yes
Emotional Wellness is the ability to understand ourselves and cope with the challenges life can bring. The ability to acknowledge and share feelings of anger, fear, sadness or stress; hope, love, joy and happiness in a productive manner contributes to our Emotional Wellness.	Yes
Spiritual Wellness is the ability to establish peace and harmony in our lives. The ability to develop congruency between values and actions and to realize a common purpose that binds creation together contributes to our Spiritual Wellness.	No
Environmental Wellness is the ability to recognize our own responsibility for the quality of the air, the water and the land that surrounds us. The ability to make a positive impact on the quality of our environment, be it our homes, our communities or our planet contributes to our Environmental Wellness.	No
Occupational Wellness is the ability to get personal fulfillment from our jobs or our chosen career fields while still maintaining balance in our lives. Our desire to contribute in our careers to make a positive impact on the organizations we work in and to society as a whole leads to Occupational Wellness.	No
Intellectual Wellness is the ability to open our minds to new ideas and experiences that can be applied to personal decisions, group interaction and community betterment. The desire to learn new concepts, improve skills and seek challenges in pursuit of lifelong learning contributes to our Intellectual Wellness.	Yes
Physical Wellness is the ability to maintain a healthy quality of life that allows us to get through our daily activities without undue fatigue or physical stress. The ability to recognize that our behaviors have a significant impact on our wellness and adopting healthful habits (routine check ups, a balanced diet, exercise, etc.) while avoiding destructive habits (tobacco, drugs, alcohol, etc.) will lead to optimal Physical Wellness.	Yes

Based on the results of the table (4 Yes and 3 No), the feeding program of FtH is not an encompassing and multidimensional health program which can target and nourish the 7 dimensions of wellness of a person. On its own, it focuses primarily on physical, mental, emotional and social health of a child. This kind of feeding program is better compared to other since this has a medium-term provision included in the program to ensure that the participants can actually graduate from malnourishment. We cannot eradicate the problems of the world in connection with community and health, but through programs like this, we can make the world a better place one plate at a time.

Reference:

University of California, Riverside. Seven Dimensions of Wellness. Retrieved from https://wellness.ucr.edu/seven_dimensions.html on July 30, 2015

Feed the Hungry. Retrieved from http://feedthehungryphil.org/feeding-and-nutrition/ on July 30, 2015