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?