Chapter 6- School Health Programs

Chapter 6- School Health Programs
Chapter six focused on the school health programs. The school health programs are an important part of community health. Schools have a huge affect on each students health. They can either work to improve it or they can disregard the health of the kids and make it worse.
A coordinated school health program is defined as, an organized set of policies, procedures, and activities to protect, promote and improve the health and well being of students and staff, thus improving students a ability to learn. In the majority of the United States school health programs are not well coordinated. In some schools the health teacher will talk about getting proper exercise, but the gym teacher was never told of what the proper exercise is needed for the students. So the students are told what they need to do, but do not get the best teaching they could have got if the health teacher and the physical education teacher were communicating on what was best for the kids. When people work and plan together to implement a school health program they are referred to as school health council. The primary role of the council is to provide coordination of the various components of the CSHP to help students reach and maintain a healthy lifestyle. An interesting fact that shows how big of an impact teachers and faculty really do have over the students is, “teachers spend more waking hours with school aged children than the parents do in most cases.” The health of children and their learning are reciprocally related. One cannot exist without the other. If a student is not healthy, he is going to suffer in the class room. He could also possibly distract other kids from getting the most they could have out of their own education.
A foundation is needed for any school health program. Any good foundation has a school administrator who supports such an effort. A well organized health council that is truly interested in providing a coordinated program for the kids. Written school health policies are also very important. A highly supportive administrator is a must. They are the people who have the connections and can get what is needed. School health policies are written statements that provide a framework to guide all those who work within the program. Well written policies provide a sense of direction for everyone involved. The responsibility of coordinating each program in a district lies on the shoulders of the school health coordinator. The school health coordinator would be a well trained school nurse or a health educator. One half of the states in the United States have school districts who employ school health coordinator, but there are only a few that require it. School health services are those health services provided for students to appraise, protect, and promote health. School health education has been defined as the planned sequential K-12 curriculum that address the physical, mental, emotional, and social dimensions of health. It is designed to motivate and assist students to maintain and improve their health.
　
There are many factors that go into making a good well run school health program. I feel it is often overlooked how much work is really put in and required to have good program in place. It is very important that everyone involved is on the same page. They all need to be communicating, sharing ideas with each other so no one is left out of the loop. That is essential because a team effort is needed to get the kids to live healthy lifestyles. If the health teacher has a great way for the children to stay fit, he has to also share that with the physical education teacher so he can implement that in his class. I was shocked to read that teachers often times spend more waking hours with the kids than do the parents. That fact really proves why there needs to be a well run program in place for the students to benefit from. Also the teachers are going to have to step forward and be role models for the kids. A lot of the time kids look up to what older people are doing and will follow their lead to having a healthy lifestyle. I was surprised to see that most states do not require a school health educator. That is very important that schools have one. Who can teach a kid how to be healthy better than a health expert? Even though they are not required in a lot of states it was good to see many states do have them in place. Hopefully they become required soon and they can continue to make a difference.

Chapter 5:
Abstract:
In this chapter the book went through how changes are made in the community. It started by talking about organizing and building of programs and people. Bringing people together is tough and keeping them is even tougher, the book gave ideas on keeping volunteers and getting them to feel ownership. Also getting people involved is hared now than ever because of family situations and the lack of communities, not knowing your neighbors. It is important to get people involved that have stake in the community, important people and people that others will believe and want to work with.
Later the chapter went on to talk about programs that have been implemented and how they work. The examples they gave were Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities, PATCH, and MAPP. Each of these examples has a different purpose in the community, thus each has a different way of functioning. All had different steps of implementation. This chapter went through who, what, and how health programs are formed. It outlined how these programs are made and how they work.
Reflection:
Our group really enjoyed reading this chapter. We talked about how well it outlined the building of programs, and all of us really came out with an understanding of these programs. Barry remembered and example of a community program in his home town, where he was pushed into working on something he really didn't believe in and related that to ownership. He talked about how he just really didn't feel connected to it, so it didn't do anything for him. We also talked about how easy it is for these programs to fail. If the people working on these do not put In all the effort and really look into what they are trying to get done the program will fail.
We cold see how skipping or sliding through the data collection stage would really mess up a program, if you do not have the right information about your constituency then you do not have a program. Then we talked about how much work it is to get a program to work, there is so much to do from the start to the finish. You need to get people, keep people, cater to every ones needs, listen to everyone, and this is just the start. After all of that you need to get into the community and put the programs you have made to work?!?! It was really mind blowing.

Chapter 3: Epidemiology

Abstract: Chapter 3 was about “Epidemiology” which is the study of distribution and determinants of health-related states or events in specified populations. Chapter 3 provided us with a ton of terms. We learn the different terms for types of diseases. There can be an acute disease, which lasts under 3 months such as the common cold or chicken pox, or there can be chronic diseases which lasts longer than 3 months sometimes for life such as diabetes. We learn terms of different rates and what they measure (death, birth, illness among a population, etc). We learn terms about different studies such as an analytic study or a cohort study. We also learn WHY it’s important to have Epidemiologists (people who study outbreaks of disease, injury and death in the human population). They help us to target where and from what people are getting sick and which helps us stop it before an epidemic occurs (also another term given). Along with this there was a brief history on Epidemiology itself. Many statistics were also given this chapter including life expectancy (which also has subcategories like disability-adjusted life years or health-adjusted life expectancy). Lastly we learned about different types of ways Epidemiologists conduct studies on the population to collect the data for the statistics and rates.

Reflection: As a group we collectively agreed this chapter was FULL of many terms. It was very information dense and a lot was thrown at us all at once. Even when trying to write the abstract for our blog I felt like I was missing a ton of information and terms I should've been adding in. The chapter was a bit overwhelming but we all felt like Epidemiology was such an important part of Community Health that it couldn't be a chapter for "light reading."

Our group was really surprised at how in-depth certain parts of Epidemiology were. For example we had no clue that "life expectancy" actually went deeper. There is health adjusted life expectancy or disability-adjusted life years.

Mostly our group reacted and talked about whether or not we would ever want a career involving Epidemiology. All of us concluded that we wouldn't. We believe it's an important part of the field but none of us have an interest in it. Most of us want to work directly with the community not just analyze it. We have respect for epidemiologists, we just wouldn't want to be one.

Chapter 2: Health Organizations

Abstract

In chapter 2 we delve into the world of health organizations. All sorts of organizations and agencies are outlined and discussed in this chapter from the local chapters of health hounds all the way up to the big dogs, most notably The World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO is the largest health organization in the world, so essential it's even a part of the United Nations. Of course the smaller organizations are every bit as essential to the various communities as the WHO, from the governmental, to the quasi-governmental, and of course the private. It illustrates for the reader the vastness of health as a concept and a practice with some agencies going for a broader view and participation where others work toward a focus such as nutrition, cardiac health, anti-drug, etc. There's an agency at the ready for just about everything somewhere.

Reflection
With all of these people working toward the betterment of our health policies and practices we are well on our way to a healthier world but we are still far from that goal. Despite the vast numbers and reach of these various organizations we all know of the poor health and living conditions of many of the peoples of the world. Even in our own country of plenty we have extraordinarily poor health practices in many areas. Even so, this chapter is something of an encouragement especially for those of us with a passion for health and the propagation of it. It shows us many of the opportunities that await us should we continue to pursue that passion as well as a chance to better narrow down what specific area of health to pursue because despite our passion, very few people possess the scope to cover the vastness of the prospect.

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Abstract: The first chapter was an overview of the history of Community Health spread out over thousands of years. It starts off talking about the beginning of Community Health. Then it goes on to progressing through the different time periods and different health changes that occurred, for better and for worse. In the introduction it gives you the definition of health, health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well being and not merely the absence of disease and health. Now having a good idea for what health really is it helps to further understand the issues that came up over time. It was later determined that health cannot be defined as a state because it is ever changing. The book has chose a new definition of the word health. Health is a dynamic state or condition of the human organism that is multidimensional, physical, emotional, social, intellectual, spiritual, and occupational.
Community health dates back all the way to 500 B.C. The first hospital was created during the Roman Empire. During this time the spiritual era of public health began. In that time every disease was blamed on spiritual factors, not actual health problems. As you would expect many health problems began to occur. Many epidemics lead to the death of millions in this time. Leprosy was one of the earliest epidemics to hit. The deadliest epidemic to hit during this time was the plague. The plague was also known as the black death. With all the plagues there was a total of 25 million deaths in Europe alone. In some of the most severe spots only one out of ten people survived.
The next time period was the start of an improvement in health. The Renaissance period was characterized by a rebirth of thinking about the nature of the world and humankind. One big step was that there was a growing belief that disease was caused by environmental factors not spiritual. By changing one belief that lead to the first signs of many new diseases.
When the 18th century rolled around living conditions were still very poor, cities were over crowded, and water was unsanitary, however, one big achievement was that in 1796 Dr. Edward Jenner demonstrated the process of vaccination as a protection against small pox. Later on the government started to get more and more involved in the health issues going on. Many new organizations were created to help fight the spread of disease.
In the 20th century Community Health really was starting to be taken seriously. The birth of the first national level volunteer health agencies were started. The social security act of 1935 marked the beginning of the first major government involvement in the health industry. In the 2000’s Bioterrorism became an issue, bioterrorism is the threat or release of biological agents for the purpose of influencing the conduct of government intimidating or coercing a civilian population to further political or social objectives.

Reflection: After reading chapter one I was very intrigued to find out the history behind Community Health and the many issues that affected it. People involved in any health field should be pleased with the progress made over time, which dates all the way back to 500 B.C. It is crazy to imagine that people were actually thinking about health back then. Peoples beliefs changed many times over the thousands of years, but to me that makes it more interesting, to see how each generation learned and then evolved their Health theories over prior knowledge.
Health obviously started off with little or no care. What can you really expect though. Very few people were able to get an education and I am sure health issues were not on the top of their list to learn about. When I read about how people during the middle ages thought health problems were spiritual I was kind of stunned. After thinking though the people of that time had no prior knowledge to go on, so now they don’t sound as crazy. At least they were thinking of possibilities, that’s the first step. I was pleased to see some progress made during the Renaissance period. It seemed like the people were much smarter concluding that health problems are not spiritual but environmental. That was the first big step in my opinion in understanding community health. It was nice to see the government putting a foot forward in dealing with the health problems across the country. I feel that they did a good job and made many people realize that health is important. With all the advancements most people can remain pretty healthy. Some people choose not to by choosing bad lifestyles. Many people are suffering from obesity, drug use, large consumptions of alcohol, and its sad to see people hurting their own bodies when in reality its not to hard to maintain a healthy lifestyle barring certain conditions that are not controllable. It is very pleasing to see Community Health on the rise and people are putting in a real effort to remain fit and healthy!