Over the past 13 weeks, I have had the opportunity to learn about the impact health promotion can have on an individual’s or community’s health. While I had very little understanding of what health promotion was at the beginning of this course, I now feel as though the frameworks, models, theories, and priority setting skills demonstrated in this course has provided me with the ability to start thinking of health promotion planning to benefit the patients who visit the hospital I work at. I also have a better understanding of barriers to health that patients face if healthcare is not provided with diversity, equity, and inclusivity in mind. I am excited to further develop my knowledge regarding health promotion next semester in Health Promotion II.
In the second unit, I was introduced to the 17 sustainable development goals. At first, they demonstrated that the United Nations was attempting to have everyone (worldwide) live with equitable access to food, education, job security, clean water, and health care (to name a few). I was optimistic that this would solve a lot of the issues worldwide. Upon reading many of the journal articles and learning resources, I now understand that not only are many countries no where near accomplishing the goals, they have not been a priority at all, with no work done to work towards achieving even one goal. Knowing how far behind Canada is in achieving many of these goals is disheartening and demonstrates that more needs to be done to ensure we are closer to achieving a majority of them.
I was really intrigued by the concept of strengths-based approaches for not only health promotion planning, but also in my everyday role as a leader. I feel as though when plans are put into place and individuals are involved with driving change, it is important to have those involved focus on the strengths of the individuals and how they will contribute. It is important to have them realize how much of an asset they are in helping achieving the end goal. I will definitely use the standards for strength-based approaches (Rapp, Saleebey and Sullivan, 2008 as cited by Pattoni, 2012) to encourage the participants in future projects to elicit better involvement and engagement.
The most powerful learning moment I had was discovering the implicit bias I have with regards to genders and how I associate them with career, family, and different areas of study. While I work with many strong women in leadership positions at work, I still seem to associate women with family and men with careers. I also associate men with science and women with liberal arts. The concept of implicit bias has opened my eyes to these biases and has intrigued me to find out more about the biases I currently have. It has driven me to take steps to identify biases, as well and further my understanding of ways in which to minimize them.
Overall, this course has been an enjoyable experience and has taught me many new concepts and skills that I can use in my professional career. It has allowed me to understand ways to drive changes in my own department, as well as broadened my understanding of different perspectives with regards to barriers that patients in the community have in obtaining health care. These skills will allow me to have a better idea on how to approach change plans in the future.
References
Pattoni, L. (2012, May 1). Strengths-based approaches for working with individuals. Iriss. https://www.iriss.org.uk/resources/insights/strengths-based-approaches-working-individuals
United Nations. (n.d.). The 17 goals. https://sdgs.un.org/goals
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