Health in the Community

Patient Care CEO 1.4: Understand the role of disease prevention and health promotion in relation to individual patients and / or populations and utilize these principles in clinical encounters.

Healthy living is not strictly limited to disease prevention and treatment. Factors such as diet, activity level, stress level, and sleep also contribute to our health. Although the last few decades have yielded much knowledge about how our lifestyle choices and behaviors influence our health, the overall health trends of our country suggest that this information has not reached a significant portion of our population. For example, the rate of obesity is steadily increasing, and more people are being diagnosed with diabetes mellitus or cardiovascular disease at younger ages. Almost 20% of children today are considered obese, significantly increased from 4% in the 1970’s. These children are subsequently more likely to remain or become more obese as adults. Many cases are attributable to poor diet and lack of physical activity, but if we can intervene and find a way to modify their behaviors early on, we may be able to improve their health outcomes.

As part of our medical school curriculum, students at the Ohio State University College of Medicine participate in Community Health Education projects aimed at improving health literacy and education throughout the community. My group was involved in a project with a youth summer camp at the Central Community House in Columbus, Ohio. Criteria for admission into the summer camp include coming from an underserved background, a population that has a higher proportion of obesity compared to individuals of higher socioeconomic status. Our goals were to assess the children’s knowledge of the benefits of healthy eating and physical activity, evaluate their current exercise and eating behaviors, and provide education regarding a healthy diet and exercise.

Our plan was to introduce a weekly class on nutrition and exercise for 8 weeks of the summer program. During the first class, we administered a quiz to see what our students knew, and an exercise survey to see how much physical activity the children did.

Community Health Project QuizSurvey, and Sample Agenda

For our subsequent classes, we would choose a theme to focus on for that day. One class looked at different types of aerobic exercise; another taught different strengthening and flexibility exercises; a third was dedicated to the different categories of food and examples of healthy and tasty snacks. At our last class, we designed a relay race that reviewed all the different types of exercises from our course and administered the same quiz and exercise survey from before. We wanted to reinforce what we had taught over the last few weeks and see if the children’s knowledge had improved or if they increased their physical activity after going through our course.

The results of our quiz indicated a statistically insignificant increase in the scores, and no significant change in the level of physical activity.

A few months after the completion of our project, we gave a poster presentation of our work at the annual Community Health Education Poster Day.

Community Health Education Poster

Working with these children at the Central Community Health gave me firsthand experience with the deficiencies in health knowledge in the community, especially among the underserved. As a child, I learned about the importance of diet and exercise during my elementary school classes. We even had dedicated classes on those subjects, and I felt that I had a good understanding of healthy behaviors from that young age. These kids did not have the same opportunities. Although the results of our assessments did not suggest a statistically significant increase in health knowledge or physical activity, I believe that the two months we spent with these children nonetheless provided them with valuable education and life lessons. After sampling tasty healthy snacks in our class, the children may go home and ask their parents to buy those foods; after learning new fun individual and group exercises and games, they may want to teach those to their friends and play with them. If we could work with these children over a longer period of time, perhaps even year-round, we may see more of a change in their activity level and knowledge. Alternatively, if we could involve a larger range of ages, we could provide longitudinal instruction that is also tailored to their age. Our project is only a starting point for what can potentially be a long-term and meaningful program for the Central Community Health. ​