Public Health Initiative
To ensure I put in practice skills I learned from my Master’s Program in Public Health, I co-founded the Green Morality Initiative to serve as a platform for health promotion. The organization was approved to work as 501 (c) (3) under IRS late 2015 and since then is operational. For more, please go to: http://www.greenmo.org/
The first health promotion activity that I designed through the Green Morality is listed below.
Topic: Preventable Non-Communicable Diseases
Goal: Self-Commitment To Deduce (NCDs) Incidences.
Participants: One Student selected from 8th or 9th Grade.
Building a strong community is not something hard to do but something that might be intricate to accomplish. Nowadays preventable non-communicable diseases are the leading causes of death in the world. According to CDC nearly 900,000 Americans die each year from five premature leading causes of death. Among those causes 20 percent to 40 percent could be prevented (CDC, 2014). Thinking of the death pole, one cannot ignore time and money spent taking care of our dear ones under medical conditions.
Yet youth are at risks to be exposed to preventable non-communication diseases, they constitute the potential preventive agents for our society. Peer relationships play a big role to create influences among youth. These influences can be either positives or negatives.
Though being at high risks youth can be best teachers of social change to their peers and to the entire community. It is under this perspective therefore, that we at Green Morality came up with this initiative to encourage youth especially those who are preparing to embrace high school life in the next one or two years (8th and 9th Grade) to start building strong and confident maturity as far as health is concerned while engaging them to a thoughtful stage to self-develop health risks preventive strategies. The slogan is “Green I know, Morality I share”.
Objectives of Green Morality initiative:
- Participants will self-assuredly be able to define preventable non-communicable diseases.
- Participants will be able to critically analyze risk factors that contribute to preventable non-communicable diseases and identify how prevention strategies can be distorted to fit our society’s definition to being healthy.
- Participants will be able to identify ways to maintain a healthy lifestyle and reduce health risks.
- Participants will consistently be confident to share with others (peers, parents, etc.) important skills related to community health.
School staff will select participant of the project competition. The selected participant (one for each school) will obtain permission from his/her parents or guardian prior to start working on the project.
Each participant will present his/her work to the public and the jury constituted by both school and city public health representative.
Note: This is an ongoing project, the winner(s) will have the privilege to compete with other schools in outside of Amarillo.
Green Morality reserves the right to screen the project to ensure its relevance prior to the presentation. Invitations will be sent to presenters with maximum time to allow comprehensive preparation.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2014). Up to 40 percent of annual deaths from each of five leading US causes are preventable. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p0501-preventable-deaths.html
I credit the knowledge and motivation from all my MPH program at Concordia University Nebraska especially the following classes:
Concepts of Environmental Health: MPH 520
Principles of Health Behaviors: MPH 515
Marketing in Public Health: MPH 588
