May!

Dress-up, playing on the playground, swimming in the pool - welcome back to the days of being a little kid.

Internship Jounal 1 - Education and Motivation

This past week I was reminded once again of the complicated matter of health education. It is quite prevalent in America, seen in articles, television segments, doctors’ warnings, and the health food industry; and it is quite often ignored. Yet, I do not think that just because it is widely ignored means that we should discontinue it. But I wonder what will truly motivate people – education or other means - to live healthier lives.

On Sunday, I worked with some of the hospital’s physical and occupational therapists at “Kids in the Kitchen”, an event hosted by the hospital and put on by the Junior League of Daytona Beach. Their goal, as stated to us, was to raise awareness about the epidemic of childhood obesity and help kids avoid obesity themselves by teaching them how to be healthy.

Education is often employed to combat health concerns. The goal is that education about the serious health problems many are bringing upon themselves will motivate them to change their behaviors. So perhaps any discussion about health education is fundamentally one about motivation and behavior changes – how can someone be motivated to make changes in long-standing habits, especially when such habits are reinforced by outside influences? I think that this is quite difficult to do.

It seems that education’s influence is greatest when lessons are repeated and coupled with models of the behavior that the education promotes. For example, kids can hear a lecture on the importance of eating healthy every month at school for a year; but they are unlikely to change their eating habits unless their friends and family do too. Yet sometimes kids get the message and decide that they want to eat differently than “everyone else” in order to take care of their bodies. Maybe they are motivated by getting in shape to play a sport, or by warnings that all that sugar will rot out their teeth. Whatever the case, kids do not seem to be as difficult to motivate as adults.

Education about the collective poor health of Americans, and what we can do to change it, is widespread. It isn’t that most Americans (at least those pertaining to the middle-class or above) do not know about the issues or the solutions; it’s that most seem to be so set in their ways that making changes is not an option. Consequently, we turn to educating children, in hopes that they will make better choices than many adults whose eating and exercise choices are so engrained that they are hard to overhaul. But, once more, how can we expect kids to do something that the adults who model all sorts of behaviors for them are not doing themselves?

I am not trying to make anyone feel badly. It is just clear that, collectively, Americans are not as healthy as we could be if we ate better and exercised more. What will it take to motivate and help people of all ages make changes to their eating and exercise habits so that they will be healthier?

Nutrition and Exercise

How many times have I said those words this semester? Since I am majoring in Rehabilitative Studies, I am taking a lot of classes in our school's Integrative Health Department. One of my classes involves doing an internship at a local hospital and another (non-health science) class involves doing a community service project. A girl in my class and I teamed up on the project and decided to try to teach kids at a local Boys and Girls club about eating healthy and getting enough exercise.

I'm sorry if I'm losing people here...

Anyway, the semester's experiences are giving me a lot to think about and I wanted to use this blog as a means of discussing some of it. I have to write journal entries for both of those classes and thought I would post some of them. Sometimes they contain questions, other times observations, and sometimes speculations about various topics.

I would love feedback from anyone who's interested. A dialogue with people from outside of my university setting would help broaden my perspective about these topics.

HaNnAh!

I just wanted to let everyone who knows Hannah know that she's in Moscow now for a semester abroad. She got there on Friday morning our time and was supposed to move into her dorm room on Sunday. (Until then, she and her dad were going to be staying with a friend of her dad's who lives there).

If you want to see videos, pictures, and posts from the girl, she has a blog. There is a link to it off to the right on this main page (Under "Places I go", click on "Hannah's blog"). :0)

Getting unfrozen

If the name of the game was freezetag, I've been frozen for a while. I was "tagged" by Amy, in response to a tag by Tammi, a couple months ago. As Amy explained, to fulfill the requirements of being tagged, you have to tell 7 random facts about yourself. After plenty of time to think about it and hearty laughs at Amy's responses, here goes.

1. I like kneesocks. Like a lot. If they were in style, I'd wear them all the time. They're the reason I wouldn't mind wearing your traditional catholic school girl uniform. Are there any other lovers out there?

2. I have a dramatic flair. Not too sure where I got it from, but I'm awaiting the time when a group of friends runs up and announces that they want to put on a play. I'd gladly star in it.

3. I don't mix laundery detergents, but I too pick up a lot of the poor clothes that have fallen on the floors of stores I'm shopping in. If something's half on its hanger, I can hardly resist it either.

4. Similar to #3, I regularly return at least some of the items I've tried on in dressing rooms to their racks. This is usually because I've tried on SO many that I feel bad for the poor employees who have to refold, rehang, or simply go put them all back.

5. I once "rescued", with the help of my younger sister, a bunch of frogs from a water-filled pipe on our playground and brought them in the house so that we could play with them. Who knows how long we stayed with them that first day, and I don't remember leaving them there, but the poor guys were discovered (months??) later in a corner of my room, in the condition you would expect forgotten "pets" to be in.

6. I have a thing for making connections. Katie has started to tease me about it, because apparently she doesn't always see them. Where's her imagination? Sometimes the connections are in the form of someone looking like another person I know; and other times I make connections between people in a personality/circumstances/interests way. I like to think of people who should meet, talk, or who might gain something from getting to know each other.

7. I was a Hanson, Spice Girls, and Backstreet Boys lover. Mmmbop, doobadobopdombop, badibidabadombopbibidopbadooo. Oh yeah... Can ya tell me, Oh, yeah, what they're saying, 'cuz I don't know.

Goodnight!