1st Reflection

The Scholten reading I thought was very hard to read. The way it was written made comprehending the information it was presenting difficult. I am very glad we went over it in class- much easier to understand. The advertising effectiveness reminded me of an undergraduate class I took – Social Influence (in Psychology department). It was interesting to look at advertising from another point of view. Especially interesting was being able to compare the peripheral route from the ELM to some of the tricks we learned about in Social Influence and especially in a book I read - The Age of Propaganda: The Everyday use and abuse of Persuasion.
Having just taken 661 last semester, it was nice to have a condensed version of all the theories. Theory at a Glance is easy to look though to find the main points of any theory you want to use. I wish the ecological model was easier to employ in the United States. It is my favorite model especially when looking at things like increasing physical activity and nutrition. Even when thinking about an issue it is frustrating knowing you cannot change the environment very easily as policy in the United States is very hard to change. I wonder how much of a stressor inability to invoke change on a large scale will be while actually working in the field of public health. I think it is crazy that many schools still have soda machines in their hallways even though almost everyone agrees soda is not good for children and leads to weight gain. It seems like such a straight forward step to ban soda machines from schools as well as make food sold at schools nutritious (ie get rid of pizza hut, kfc, ect from schools). The way our government is though- there is still no national ban or policy.
Lanny Mommsen