HSO-30806 Settings for Health Promotion

Course

Credits 6.00

Language of instruction:

English

Assumed knowledge on:

Basic principles of health promotion, recommended: HSO-31806 Interdisciplinary Research and Action for Health and HSO-31306 Environmental Assets for Health.

Contents:

Much of what makes people healthy or sick - income, social position, where people live, level of literacy, culture, political system - lies outside the health sector. Health promotion practices require a shift in emphasis from disease focused messages about risk, to a more ecological approach taking into account social, environmental, and cultural contexts in which people live, work, recreate and play (families, schools, workplaces, recreation and communities). A setting is defined as a place or social context in which people engage in daily activities, in which environmental, organisational and personal factors interact with health and well-being. Settings offer an opportunity to effectively and cost-effectively promote health and well-being, but may also constrain it. In this course we focus settings such as: family/household, educational settings, workplaces, recreation, prisons, hospitals and communities. By means of an in-depth case study, students will explore a certain health promotion issue from a settings perspective, to get concrete experience with the settings approach.

Learning outcomes:

After successful completion of this course students are expected to be able to:
- understand theories about the relationship between health and the context in which people live, work, play and recreate;
- apply theory and methods in the field of Health and Society in analysing a setting for health promotion and designing solutions for it;
- determine general and specific features of different settings;
- identify meaningful and motivating resources for life within different settings;
- collaboratively (in a group) develop and execute a settings based health promotion research project (case study) commissioned by a client outside the university;
- develop creative, self-regulated as well as collective learning.

Activities:

The course consists of:
- lectures (including guest lectures);
- literature study;
- working group wise on the development of a field work research plan for a case study commissioned by a client outside the university;
- critically peer reviewing research proposals of fellow students;
- critically peer reviewing the final project report of another group;
- two reflection reports about the individual and collective learning process.

Examination:

The final mark is a weighted average:
- expectation paper (5%)
- individual peer review on field work plan (10%)
- presentation fieldwork plan (5%)
- individual peer review final report 30%
- group project report (40%)
- presentation final report (5%)
- final reflection paper (5%)
Each component needs a minimum mark of 5.5 to pass.

Literature:

Literature will be made available through MyPortal.