HEP 452 Assignment Final Reflection

• How do you feel this work has affected your self-efficacy to effect change?

Having undergone through the entire course reading materials, I have amassed enough knowledge that can help me become an effective change initiator in regard to improving the lives of the people around me. From the course content, I have learned how to identify health issues in the community, how to conduct grassroot advocacy and effective ways to address the problems. Every community has its own problems, and thus, it is important to conduct enough research that will enable bring out the best solution to the problem. For example, in my community, many people have been struggling with obesity, which can be attributed to lifestyle changes and lack of time to engage in physical exercise. Many people work more than one job, and thus, they cannot find time to engage in physical activities, and if they do, it is for a limited time. An alternative solution to help my community was to increase the cycling paths and encourage people to adopt cycling to work as this will help reduce obesity by burning calories (Chatterjee et al., 2020). Based on this, I can confidently say that the coursework has helped improve my self-efficacy in regard to effecting change in the community.

• How did you feel carrying out your health advocacy campaign?

Carrying out my health advocacy campaign on the importance of cycling to work had a special impact on my career in health advocacy. I know I didn’t make it perfect, but I tried to effect change in the community. My concern is to have a healthy community, and therefore, it is my passion to have everyone subscribe to positive health behavior. Only through this can we have a healthy community and prevent lifestyle conditions such as obesity that have caused many deaths in my community. Therefore, conducting the health advocacy campaign made me feel like I was part of a bigger goal, and I am proud of such a life-changing campaign.

• Relate one concept learned from chapter 13 and one from chapter 15, relating it to your experience of this course.

Social marketing refers to the use of marketing principles to influence human behavior to improve health or benefit the community (Butterfoss, 2015). Conducting an advocacy campaign is not a simple task as it requires the message to every member of the community. Social marketing emphasizes the need to listen to the priority population, learn what may motivate them to change, and confront the obstacles that may block the path to positive behaviors. Based on my advocacy campaign, people working in more than one job are tied and thus cannot find time to exercise. However, they encounter one major problem, dealing with heavy traffic such that they end up being late to work. This is one of the greatest motivations that can help people adopt cycling as an alternative to go to work as it is easy to navigate through traffic and fun to ride together. As a result, these people will have adopted cycling to work, which will help burn calories and hence help in reducing the incidence of obesity (Chatterjee et al., 2020). However, in regard to chapter 15 concerning implications and future research, rather than focusing only on whether coalitions achieve the desired long-term outcomes in a given community, it is important to appreciate what has worked and what hasn’t in steps along the way for the outcomes (Butterfoss, 2015). Not everything will go as planned, but the progress made needs to be embraced as it is a step in a positive direction in regard to improving the health of a community.

References

Butterfoss, F. D. (2015). Transformational Leadership. In Coalitions and partnerships in Community Health (pp. 112–114). essay, John Wiley & Sons.

Chatterjee, K., Chng, S., Clark, B., Davis, A., De Vos, J., Ettema, D., … & Reardon, L. (2020). Commuting and wellbeing: a critical overview of the literature with implications for policy and future research. Transport reviews, 40(1), 5-34.