As I sit here halfway through the MHST/NURS 631 Health Promotion 1: Planning course, I cannot help but reflect on the valuable learning in my journey thus far. I have gained a greater understanding of the complexity of health promotion, and it goes far beyond the fundamentals. My experience in public health has provided me with a sense of the concepts and the opportunity to support health promotion initiatives and work closely with health promoters. Since health promotion is the core of public health, I was very excited to learn that these courses were offered as a secondary focus to the graduate degree program.
In complete transparency, the first two assignments were frightening, and I will admit that I often reminded myself that where I am uncomfortable, I grow. That said, once they were completed and reflected, they were more enjoyable than I anticipated. I appreciated the opportunity to add to my work experience and apply new and previously learned knowledge to my coursework. The program that I lead in sexual health and harm reduction falls within many of the Ontario Public Health Standards (OPHS) for foundational and program requirements, which made choosing an area for research and design of a health promotion initiative challenging to narrow down. The proposal I put forth, along with a health infographic to communicate the overarching health promotion initiative, is an effort to address the rising rates of infection syphilis amongst females of reproductive age. Although I am very familiar with syphilis, I wanted to understand better the complex factors that may make an individual or population more vulnerable to acquiring it and how best we can promote awareness. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of information that was available related to the rising rates of syphilis in females and just how much the infection has shifted in population groups in the past five years, not only at a global level but nationally, provincially and locally.
As a leader in public health, I acknowledge the importance of my role to collaborate with others and identify and gain support for specific health issues with a clear vision for driving equitable and accessible public health initiatives. I am eager to broaden and strengthen my knowledge about various health promotion models and theories to support the identification of social and structural determinants, relevant stakeholders, and evidence that will drive my health promotion initiative to address my chosen health care issue, as well as gain a deeper understanding about effective evaluation methods and tools for ongoing assessment. The knowledge I gain from this course is directly applicable to my current position as a program manager, and I look forward to applying this new knowledge to organizational and program planning and health promotion efforts.
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