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?!?