Reflection:
Before I entered the program, I had some understanding of program planning in a previous job during my undergraduate years. I was the mind and body programmer for Appalachian State University Recreation. During my job, I created events for the students to participate in such as “yoga under the stars” and even new classes like stand up paddle board yoga in the pool. I would curate events that I was interested in bringing to App State and knew that I could lead or had other instructors who could lead.
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Since doing the Program Planning class through the UNCG MPH department, I have realized how important it is to listen to what the community needs. When planning programs, what you want is not the driving factor. You must sit down with community members and plan accordingly to their needs. Another thing I have learned is researching existing literature for your "problem" because there is a lot of background evidence to help create your plan. Many similar plans have been executed and show their trial and error. A great resource is HealthyPeople2020.
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Background:
My group and I partnered with the Center for Student Well-Being which is within the Department of Recreation and Wellness inside of the Leonard J Kaplan gym at UNCG. The center aims to provide education and to develop and expand knowledge for UNCG students related to their health and well-being. Topics include alcohol and substance use prevention, sexual health, nutrition and body image, mental health, and violence prevention. The center believes that being a successful student is directly correlated to their personal wellness journey. We worked under Jill Shaw who is the current Assistant Director of the nutrition education programs and Jeanne Irwin-Olson who is the Associate Director of the Center for Student Well-Being. We will be designing a program that focuses on students showing signs of prediabetes. The goal was to help reduce the prevalence of diabetes through lifestyle changes such as nutrition and physical activity. The layout is as followed:
EVENT: Free Diabetes testing in Kaplan gymnasium with blood sugar test
event will take place either in the beginning of January due to New Year’s resolutioners or early spring during “beach body” motivation
EXECUTION: anyone with fasting blood sugar level from 100 to 125 mg/dL (5.6 to 7.0 mmol/L) is considered prediabetes and will be documented. An email asking to join an on campus support group will be sent to anyone with prediabetes or close to prediabetes
Using the Health Belief Model as a qualitative measure, an unbiased description of the population's needs can be addressed and further examined. The Health Belief Model “is a framework used to help understand perception of benefits, threats, cues to action, and self-efficacy play into the likeliness of whether the individual will engage in behaviors to reduce their risk of the health problem”
Methods:
The proposed program will be complementary to the UNCG community and take place at the EUC building which is a central location on the main campus. It will work with many different departments through UNCG. Student services and UNCG nursing students will conduct the free screenings for students and staff. Food services will provide nutritious breakfast options for those who get a screening as an added incentive to come to the event which will be held in the morning, so students could come before class or between classes. This time period is also ideal, since diabetes screenings are most accurate and recommended before meals (MayoClinic, 2018). Advertising will be done through UNCG Campus Activities & Programs in their weekly newspaper sent via email to students. There will also be emails sent to professors to tell students about as well as panels on the TVs at the Kaplan Recreation Center.
Students and staff who have higher blood sugar levels of 100 to 125 mg/dL indicating prediabetes, or levels approaching prediabetes will be given information about resources they can utilize through the Kaplan Recreation Center. Kaplan will be willing to give prediabetic students vouchers for free fitness evaluations and will also raffle off free personal training sessions to anyone who gets a diabetes screening. A resource that will be offered and promoted to prediabetic individuals will be a program through Kaplan Recreation Center called “WELLNESS not weight”. This health-focused, justice-oriented program raises awareness of the mental, emotional, and physical dangers of weighing so that diabetes interventions do not become a type of diet culture aimed at losing weight. Fitness, well-being, and self-worth are promoted to lead healthier lifestyles as a community and through this program of changing your lifestyle, type 2 diabetes prevention could be a potential outcome.
Findings:
While our program was hypothetical and was not executed to completion, there were findings along the way. Currently at UNCG, there are no campus wide events for diabetes screening. However, there are other screenings available throughout the year, for example, for STDs and HIV. The Anna M. Gove Student health Services at UNCG offer diabetes screening but there is no advertising on the website initially for those screenings. The only information available regarding diabetes screenings was a pamphlet that mentioned services offered that you could locate when googling “UNCG health services diabetes testing”. Thus, students would only go to student health services about diabetes if they already had an idea in their mind to get a screening or they have diabetes already. There was a past attempt to provide a support group by a graduate student who had type 2 diabetes. She worked with Jill Shaw to organize an event with food and contacted students with type 2 diabetes to come and join the group. No one showed up to her event and it was deemed a failure. Student health services also tried a similar event years prior that also had a lack of support. That is why our program is focused on increasing awareness so that students will know that an individual at any age is susceptible to type 2 diabetes. Another finding was the differing attitudes and beliefs surrounding diabetes among college students. In a study by Reyes-Velazquez and Hofmann (2011), it was found that college students feel as if their peers are more at risk for developing Type-2 diabetes than they actually are. As a public health professional, this was an interesting research component because it exemplifies the many areas of health education that we have learned in our coursework.
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Recommendations:
The recommendations we have come to as a group is that our program should be implemented to bring awareness to college campuses about the risk of type 2 diabetes. This would be beneficial for all students, as the test is free and easy. We also recommend that you meet with a representative who has knowledge of health events that have been successful and those that have not been, so you do not repeat the same mistakes. Reaching out to other organizations for help is a great way to lower spending costs as well as spreading awareness about your events you are planning. As a public health educator, you should be willing to collaborate with other organizations and check literature to see if there are other methods or routes you can take when implementing a program plan.
