HSO-30806 Settings for Health Promotion

Course

Credits 6.00

Language of instruction:

English

Assumed knowledge on:

Basic principles of health promotion, recommended: CPT-36312 Interdisciplinary Approaches in Communication, Health and Life Sciences, HSO-31806 Advances in Health and Society and HSO- 20306 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:
- distinguish and understand different 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 by means of 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 research project (case study) commissioned by a client outside the university;
- develop the capability to critique and provide constructive feedback to improve other people's and your own work;
- 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:

There is no written exam but students are expected to incorporate elements of the guest lectures, theory as presented in the book, health promotion principles, system thinking in the group paper and the peer reviews. Criteria for the reviews will be made available on Blackboard.
The final mark is a weighted average:
- expectation paper (5%);
- individual peer review of field work plan (10%);
- presentation research plan (5%);
- individual peer review final report (30%);
- group project final report (40%);
- presentation final report (5%);
- final reflection paper (5%).
These grades have each to be sufficient (5.5 or more).

Literature:

Literature will be made available through MyPortal.