Evaluation and Career Opportunities

This week we learned about evaluation and career opportunities. We definitely did not have enough time for evaluation. In my perfect Health Promotions program, there would be a definite order when classes had to be taken. This one should be taken in the first semester. Then maybe we could take the same communications campaign and evaluate it in PH 666. That could cut down a bit on the hell that was that class. They would complement each other nicely, and would make up for the limited amount of time available in this class. Evaluation is an important component and it deserves a lot of attention. PH 666 gave a lot of attention to it, but I ended up feeling overwhelmed. I would recommend spreading it out a bit.

Unfortunately, even though evaluation is so important, organizations don't seem to agree until it's time to get more money. The process should begin before the program does and continue after it ends. It also demands a lot of time and money. These are things that organizations are not willing to give. This is in contrast to how easily impressed they are when it comes to evaluation. During the summer, I had to help with a grant and I volunteered to do the Logic Model. Love it! It's easy and people are so impressed by it. The Public Health Officer actually commended it when she saw it. So that's why I insisited in class on the Logic Model.

Speaking of class, I'm not convinced of the utility of the game. Sorry.... Maybe all of us were feeling a bit worn down, but it didn't seem to get a response from the class. Plus, some people are new to the program-- that game is not helpful for them if they haven't have 666 or Research Methods. Wow I'm sounding high and mighty. Don't mean to! I'm feeling a little world weary since I've come to the end of the program.

And also: Everyone should work for the County. Love it! Just be willing to volunteer for awhile. It's worth it!

Group Project Presentations 2

In the spirit of seeing Public Health everywhere and trying to incorporate it into health campaigns... I'm watching "Grey's Anatomy" and my mom noticed that the doctors are typing at the computer with surgical gloves on. Hello sanitation. Very bad example. But maybe it could be part of a "what not to do" blooper reel for medical/nursing students? And I called it when I said that the guy eating random things has Pica. Thank you PH 604!

So about our group presentation:
I think that we did a great job connecting the objectives to specific messages. We also adapted well when our idea to use SDSU NOW as a focus group. Apparently three of my emails are now in the great abyss in cyberspace now. Or people don't feel inclined to help out someone they don't know. Even if I am a student. Note to self for the future: always have pity on poor little students. And answer emails.

Things we need to work on include having a set standard definition for Shakti. They already have explanations of the organization, but they involve a lot of jargon that might be confusing. We also need to think about what "method" we are using. I thought it was a general word, not a list of specifics.

Well I have faith in our group. Wish I had faith in myself to finish this stupid "Comprehensive Exam", oh and to pass my classes. I'll quit with the whining now....

Great job on the projects class! We're almost there!

Poopular Culture and Entertainment

It was fun watching clips in class and reading about other people's reactions. Laura brought up some old-shool examples (yay Saved By the Bell!) that used popular entertainment to bring up health issues. The 80's were great for that. Didn't Nancy Reagan guest-star on a popular show to talk about the dangers of drugs? It was part of her "Just Say No" campaign. I think that it can be a good idea to use popular shows to access certain sections of the population. But it can back-fire. Some of them can seem really trite and make a serious situation seem also laughable. Going back to the "Saved by the Bell" example, I remember the over-acting that went into Jesse's caffeine pills. It was a bit of a mockery.

On the other hand, maybe using characters that the audience identifies with to illustrate a health danger will help by-pass defense mechanisms. Maybe it will be like it happened to a friend, and that therefore it could also happen to them personally.

Ah, the double-edged sword.

Web 2.0

In class, we talked about how accessible the web is now. But I disagree- there is still an elitist element to it. Ironically, I've learned that while helping with this class. I can't format the course concepts correctly on this blog! This is interesting since I taught myself HTML! Ok, that was back in high-school, but please! The code I found shouldn't look like a complete foreign language. And yet... I still can't get the clickable table to work. So making web sites/content isn't as simple as the class, and the video example seemed to suggest. Web programmers and site masters will still be around!

But it is interesting that people feel more comfortable posting on the internet. In my opinion, it's an evolution because it seems kind of unavoidable. The internet made billionaires out of normal people, so it makes sense that it would become the forum for and by the people at some point. With all of the content (and some rubbish) out there, a need might arise for more content moderators. Does the Wikipedia style of public moderation work? Well, let me put it to you this way: We still can't list it as an academic resource in papers!

Week 10 (Already...ahhh!!!)

In class this week, a lot of the time was taken up by a speaker who taught us about Public Relations. When I think of PR, I do not think of Health Promotion. Instead, I think of people selling products/clients and manipulating the public into buying them. I know- that's really unfair! But this lecture showed how to harness the power of PR for good, not evil. None of us like to think of ourselves as "salespeople". But maybe we should. We've talked about this in class too, but it kinda clicked this week. By trying to "sell" health, we can better combat those who are selling the unhealthy products. It teaches us to try harder and pay attention to what the public wants-- and that translates into more effective Health Promotion. Tough to take in some ways, but I think it's true!

Personally, I did like the speaker. It was a little weird that she didn't have any visual materials-- is that some new presentation technique? Too many people use visuals in order to hide the fact that they don't know what they are talking about. Not so here.

I also thought it was interesting that she played "Spill Your Guts" with me when I walked her to her car-- and I didn't realize it until I got back to class! She could give lessons on that too! Anyways I got an intro to PR that I'm looking forward to applying in the project (what a nerd huh?).

Wildfires

I hope that everyone affected by the fires are doing better. The whole world is rooting for you!

It was quite a harrowing journey for my family and I (especially our dog Ginger). We evacuated Ramona on Sunday night by waiting in a line of cars for 2 hours. Then our temporary place in Escondido got evacuated, so we moved to my cousin's house in San Marcos. We got to know my cousin's kids well- they are very cute, but after awhile they are a bit draining! Luckily we went back to Escondido with my will to procreate battered but still intact.

So we are back in Ramona- no drinking water still! People in my classes will be happy to know that we can take showers now. I know that it's whiny to complain about water in a disaster, but it was completely avoidable. Ramona Water District didn't ask for help when they needed to. In fact, they had to be ordered to ask for help. They also didn't have spare parts for the system. I mean, come on! There needs to be a cleansing of personnel in that company- my humble opinion.

There's also a lot that we should learn about disaster planning. Evacuating somewhere around 700,000 people and having them rome around the county.... was that necessary? I say this because they will have a lot of trouble evacuating people in the future. Especially in Ramona. They wouldn't let us back in after the fire danger was gone because there wasn't any water. My dad pointed out that they wouldn't have made us evacuate simply because the water was out. So that was inexcusable. Speaking of my dad, he did not want to evacuate. He's still a little peeved at me for threatening to stay with him if he refused to leave Ramona. In the cedar fires, my family did not evacuate (I wasn't here). Instead they single-handedly saved the house. The firefighters went to save the town of Julian. We live maybe 2 miles away from a fire department, so there's a bit of resentment there too. My point is that the actions of authorities during crisis may threaten future orders to evacuate. And then there's the whole fire plane debacle and the FEMA "newsconference". No comment. Ugh.

OK- end of rant. This shouldn't be misconstrued as being cold and thankless. Firefighters and emergency personnel saved San Diego. Everyone is thankful. It's good to vent and to point out problems. We shouldn't be sycophantic enough to ignore some constructive criticism, that's all!

Take care!

Week 8: Message Strategies

Today's in class example from CDCynergy really matched what I am doing at work. My work is a bit frustrating at this point. I designed a perfectly lovely Women's Health payroll stuffer. But my boss' boss' boss'... no diggy. So it's back to the drawing board. I thought I had this health communications thing down. Should I really be telling "Shakti Rising" how to better advertise for volunteers? Good thing I'm part of a group on the latter project. As for my payroll stuffer- well, maybe I needed to be tossed down a few pegs. I'm going to look into the CDCynergy stuff a little closer. Anything can help at this point cause I've hit a wall!

Speaking of work, I will be helping with a fluoride/varnish dental clinic for Share the Care on Saturday. It's nice to work in the field sometimes!

Another thing that struck me in class was a "mad lib" style motivation/audience centering exercise. Here it is:

If I do instead if I will because .

So let's apply this:

If I actually work on writing my comprehensive exam paper instead of continuing to procrastinate, I will survive grad school in one piece because I will be able to graduate in December.

Or something like that. Still a little fuzzy on the support info part. Maybe this will work if I paste it on my mirror?
Blech.

Health Literacy

We talked about Health Literacy in class this week. Most people seemed to enjoy the video, but I felt a little more ambivalent about it. A lot of the ways they discussed functionally illerate people reminded me of the article "Is there a hard to reach audience?" Excuses for not targeting hard to reach populations (like the functionally illiterate) in the proper way has included talk about how illiterate people have conceptual deficits. But the article said that this isn't true and that this idea and others like it labels people. It makes failing to target and effectively reach them their fault instead of placing the blame with public health professionals. Anyways, the video very briefly seemed to mention conceptual differences. It wasn't obvious, but I thought a bit of the negative attitude exposed in the hard to reach article was there. Truthfully, I also thought the psychologist who tests motorcycle focus groups was a bit of a sell-out. I could be biased though, especially given the product. I tend to think that driving cars is unhealthy, so motorcycling definitely doesn't fall in the health-promoting category for me.

I thought that the SMOG/FOG test was an interesting idea and a good tool. But what about words like "exercise", "physical activity", etc.? We use those words all of the time even though they have 3 syllables and would thus raise the reading level. I guess there's a balance. My group got it down to 6th grade reading level. Is that too low? Would people be offended? In the end, this lab can help us reach the low literacy group. But the situation seems more dire than that, so should we actually be focusing on more visual messages? It was good to get a reality check and to get out of the ivory tower. My job doesn't always allow me direct access to the community so it's easy to forget about readability. As students, we have to separate classwork from work in the community. We are expected to work from a higher level of literacy in classes, so it's easy to let that spill over into health communication pieces for the community.

Dilemmas

Dr. Engelberg started the class by asking all of us what we tell people when they ask for health advice. The answer he wanted from us was that most people don't want our advice; they really just want to be heard and perhaps validated. But I got stuck on what advice I feel qualified to give. The fact is that I don't feel too confident about giving advice. I think that grad school teaches us how to think but not what to think. Sometimes I wish I could have the latter though! Once I have my Masters, the pressure will be on from friends, families and strangers to give health advice. So it's a timely issue. Maybe that's one reason why I want to go into Nursing- so I can get a bit of the other side and be taught what to think. Is that so bad? I'm not sure yet.

As I said in my comments on the main blog, I am very nervous about the group project! But I do have a great group and a great organization to work with. So hopefully it will work out. The more I get to know the organization, the better I like it and the more pressure I feel to do right by it.

Hopefully these dilemmas will get worked out...

Drinking Gives You Breast Cancer!!!!!!!!!!

Well that's what the news says. One newscaster said that one drink per day can give you breast cancer... or was it associated with breast cancer? To some people there isn't much of a difference, and I even have trouble remembering the exact wording. But the message was clear. Put down that cocktail!

How do these studies get mentioned on the news? For one, the statistics in the study is that 1 drink per day will increase risk by 14%. The large increase in risk of 30% is reserved for women who drink more than 3 drinks a day.

My concerns: Cancer has so many factors I still don't understand how they isolate one factor and measure it over 20 years. As far as measurement goes, do you remember how many drinks you've had over the past year? The only way I would really remember is if I never or almost never drank or if I drank a good amount every day. So that really skews those results! I may not be a statistician or a particularly sharp research methodologist type, but the study definitely seems flawed. Maybe the news should stop acting like these studies are the end all be all. Or maybe I like cocktails.

Final straw: Kaiser Permanente funded it. Eww.

P.S.: Balanced reporting mandated that the newscaster had to mutter that obesity is supposed to increase risk of cancer by 50%. Hmm. 50% versus 30%. Number of obese people vs. number of people who drink more than 3 drinks a day. Why do they do these studies?!?!?!

Decide for yourself.
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/health/14216485/detail.html
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-09/kpdo-kps092207.php

Soviet Propaganda poster from http://www.tululuka.net/alco/

Module 1

So this is the end of Module 1- good introduction. I've enjoyed the applied portion of the class, especially the information about presentations. As a general rule, I hate presenting. It's actually gotten worse with practice. My palms sweat and I have trouble understanding what I say- it all sounds like the intercomm voice on "Snoopy". I actually watch the audience for confused faces, but what I say seems to make sense to them! Presentations are a necessary evil in Health Promotion. Hopefully some day I can take the "evil" out of that and make further improvements to my career. Here's hoping!

Week 4

This week a quote from the professor really struck me- he said that when it comes to planning health campaigns, we should "set the reality of time and money aside" then "scale back". Something about this statement seemed unrealistic in and of itself.

Although I believe that this might be a good exercise, in the interest of brainstorming, I don't think that public health jobs really allow for that initial creativity. At my job, we are always extremely concerned with money. Maybe it has negatively impacted our productivity, but most public health work seems to be like that. Recent budget cuts have threatened a project that we have worked very hard on, and the scramble to find new funding may have left me a bit bitter on the subject. It always seems like outside concerns heavily impact the job. State budget cuts that failed to involve the people who actually do the work have shown that public health can be a bit thankless and precarious. Right now it seems like our project and a concommitant contract will be cut in ways that could defeat the actual purpose of each.

So while I appreciate the idea about not limiting ideas due to pesky things such as time and money, I find it hard to apply to work. Ok- that concludes my whining tirade. Perhaps this blogging is a great way to get out frustrations- so plus side! Welcome back optimism.

Week 3: Applying Theory to Campaign Development Activity

Wow-- what a title! Ok, so today's lesson definitely emphasizes that for better and for worse, sex, money and looks sell. So it's best to use that in health campaigns.

To drive this point home, we had to form groups and take over a topic and age group. My group, the "Paul Newman Fanclub", had to get out a nutritional message to an older adult population. It took an unexpectedly long amount of time for us to get this off the ground. We eventually settled on trying to get older independent living adults to go to a local Farmer's Market. The real point of the activity was to understand the differences between "low involvement" and "high involvement" people. I personally found this challenging at first-- low involvement people in this context aren't necessarily eating poorly, right? The key to it all really was that low involvement people are less interested in the campaign, therefore, we should have lower expectations for change in that group. For low involvement, our group just wanted to expose them to fruits and vegetables; but high involvement (they were probably already eating fruits and vegetables), the objective was to get them to increase the variety through some healthy recipes. My group had a lot of fun with this activity. I mean we had Paul Newman as a spokesperson! For low involvement, the reward was "Hot Farmer Paul Newman" and for high involvement, the inducement was "The Socially-Conscious Paul Newman". We didn't take it too seriously, but I think it was really effective in the end.

The question posed in class was: "Should we use sex, looks and money to promote health"? Well my group's campaign certainly did! Although I have a lot of issues with free choice and health promotion--- I would agree that in the end, we have to use any weapon we can. Unhealthy products use them all the time and we can't combat that effectively without working on that same, subconscious level. Health Promotion and Public Health wants to be above this, but we have to face that facts and research alone have not produced the positive outcomes.

Well that's my opinion-- what's yours?!?

Week 1: Thank You for Smoking

Hi all-
I'm a new blogger and not very good at this so bear with me....

Anyways about Week 1: I was thinking about "Thank you for Smoking". Good movie for Public Health people if any of you haven't seen it. At work, one of my collegues sent a link about how warnings on cigarette packs are now going to show graphic pictures of healthy/unhealthy lungs, etc (in the U.K.). This reminded me of a quote from the movie:

Senator Lothridge: Now as we discussed earlier, these warning labels are not for those who know, but rather for those who don't know. What about the children?
Nick Naylor: Gentleman. It's called education. It doesn't come off the side of a cigarette carton. It comes from our teachers, and more importantly, our parents. It is the job of every parent to warn their children of all the dangers of the world including cigarettes so that one day when they get older, they can choose for themselves.

This was in response to a similar campaign in the movie where people wanted to put a graphic skull and cross-bones on cigarette packs. What does everyone think about this? Given that anti-smoking in some places may have gone as far as it can go, how far much further can we infringe upon choice? Devil's advocate here. Definitely something to think about since Public Health seems to often dance on the line between freedom of choice and more compulsory ways of imposing health in the population.
Ok-- that's my thought for today!

Experiment

Well I've seen a lot of people become obsessed with this particular mode of communication, so I've tried to stay away from it. Plus, I am very flighty and easily bored when it comes to online communication. But my PH 663 class demands it so I shall begin my descent into perceived online self-indulgence.



Anyway, here you will find my weekly pontifications on all things health. Can't wait....