 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
|
| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Joan M Murdock, PhD, Honors Scholars Program, University of Cincinnati, P.O. Box 210007, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0007, 513-556-6226, joancinti@fuse.net
A seminar style course for Honors Scholars Program students at the University of Cincinnati was presented in Fall, 2002, entitled Dimensions and Directions in Health:Choices in the Maze. This course was broad-based and offered an examination of health and health delivery in the United States. Students had majors in pre-med, pre-pharmacy, physical therapy and nutrition. A focus of this course was the relationship between lifestyle choices, behavior and health status. The students were relatively unaware of this relationship even though they were health science students. An initial Lifestyle Issues and Health questionnaire was distributed and filled out by students. A daily health journal was assigned with entries for dietary choices, exercise, medications, amount of sleep, alcohol or tobacco usage, stress levels and other health related factors. Updates in the journal were made during the course with assessments after the first week of entries and at the end of the ten week course period. Students reported an increased awareness of the relationship between lifestyle choices and health and implemented changes they believed would positively impact their health status in the short and long term. The assumption that all university health science students are knowledgeable about behavioral and lifestyle factors that contribute to good health may be incorrect and additions to curriculum to address this issue would be beneficial.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Public Health Education, Behavior Modification
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.