As adults we have an advantage over young children and adolescents, in that we have already gone through this phase in our lives and are now at the point where we can help them learn from our experiences. I would assume that most of us probably made some poor decisions during our adolescent years, as growing and trying new experiences are just a part of the teenage years. Unfortunately, as we have learned, adolescents who adopt poor health choices during this critical phase in their lives will tend to carry the behaviors into adulthood (Alexander, LaRosa, Bader, Garfield and Alexander, 2010). If we are able to educate these children and adolescents at a young age, then perhaps we can have an impact on the overall health of our next generation.
I would propose increased funding for health promotion classes offered at the junior high and high school levels, including a rigorous smoking prevention program, a drug and alcohol awareness/resistance program, a nutritional program, and a sex education program.
Just having this information available to adolescents doesn’t always get their attention, so I would incorporate several elements into this health promotion incentive:
1) An incentive-based reward system for performing and documenting good health practices. By incentives, I do not imply monetary reward, but perhaps class rewards, extra grade points or privileges based on incentives achieved.
2) A very frank, honest demonstration of what can happen as a result of poor choices. This would include presentations from people living with severe lung disease, a recovering alcoholic, a morbidly obese person, a person living with AIDS, etc.
3) Establish a school/community garden so that children and adolescents can participate in actually growing healthy, nutritious foods, then incorporate this learning into the curriculum and serve the food as part of the school menu plan.
In fact, community/school gardens are increasing in popularity throughout the country and many exist in the greater Houston area. (urbanharvest.org) Establishing a community/school garden can have many positive outcomes, and providing healthy food for our children is just one of many.
Carol Martin
References
Alexander, L.L., LaRosa, J.H., Bader, H., Garfield, S., Alexander, W.J. (2010) Dimensions in women’s health. (5th Ed.) Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett.
(2009, September). Start a community garden or school garden. Retrieved 18 September, 2009 from http://www.urbanharvest.org
You are right about awareness. I think that we should increase awareness in the Junior High Schools as well as in High School and beyond. I don't think that we can get too much information, the problem is not enough correct information are being modeled at home as well as on T.V. this can result in poor decisions making.
ReplyDeleteI think those are great proposed ides to help implement healthy behaviors in adolescents. From what I remember, health education in junior and senior high were at best average and covered very few health behavior issues. Like Math and Science, Health Education is a fundamental part of the process for continued learning and adulthood.
ReplyDeleteI believe the media has just as important of a role to play in health education. I believe adolescents are more influenced by what’s done on TV, advertised in print, and shown on the internet. In the past few years things have been done so that negative lifestyle choices are not as highly advertised. It’s also nice to see celebrities of all ages promoting healthy behavior and giving an “uncool” image to bad lifestyle behaviors.
I really liked your ideas in this posting. I completely agree that young people tend to model the behaviors they see from parents, family members, friends and the media. Rarely all of these images are positive ones, leading young people to sometimes make poor choices. As an Occupational Therapy Assistant I am working on implementing a program for obese children. This program will work with parents and kids and address healthy eating, the safety risks of being overweight and explore several areas of exercise. Although most of us would agree this is a much needed program for these kids, we are having to go through a lot of "red tape" with insurance companies to prove that the kids "need" these services. If we don't address issues like childhood obesity aggressively the problem is likely to continue getting worse.
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteThis article is very helpful as your every other articles.I hope every adolescent read this article to see what they do is wrong or right.
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