Like my new shirt?

Just kidding. My hair is much darker; )

Actually, this post is about taking our PH communication skills to a whole new level in order to REDUCE the incidence of the all too common muffin top. (Who says blogging isn't fun. . .)

Besides my own personal triathlon career goals, encouraging others to be physically active is one of my true passions. Thanks to my sadistic coach, I think I can safely say that I do my best to lead by example in this domain--most days, I can be found logging somewhere between 4 and 8 hours of swim/bike/run training. However, as we PH'ers all know, creating behavior change typically requires more than just demonstrating the behavior. I know that to effectively promote exercise, I need to expand my skill set through better health related communication.

I am confident that much of what we have learned in module 1: Creating a Framework for Public Health Communication will raise our skills to a whole new level. Whether our goal is to prevent drunk driving, STD's, or the dreaded muffin top, we are now better prepared (and we still have most of the semester to go)!

Some of the issues I've found to be the most salient:

1. High vs. Low involvement. This is a critical point in designing behavior change campaigns. It was a total "aha" to realize under what circumstances too much factual information might be overwhelming--or, conversely, a trite little jingle might be insufficient. I enjoyed the examples given in class; many of the low involvement ones were quite funny. I will certainly be using this principle to prepare for my next two speaking engagements--a lecture to the SD tri club (DEFINITE high involvement--there is a reason the term "trigeek" exists) vs. one promoting the "Tone up Challenge", a challenge to get women to begin exercising 3x / week.


2. Culture ain't a bad thing. This was one of the more minor points in the Airihenbuwa & Obregen article, but I felt they articulately stated a very good point. In research, culture seems to almost always have a negative connotation and be associated with obstacles to behavior change--e.g. "cultural barriers", but this needn't be the case. Example: in conducting the gatekeeper interviews, for our project--promoting PA in a largely Hispanic population--soccer has been mentioned several times as a common interest among kids. This is a positive thing that should be considered in designing the implementation.

3. Don't put the cart before the horse. The readings for Tuesday's class made very convincing arguments about not only how, but also WHY pretesting and focus groups are a must do from a time, effectiveness, and cost perspective. I will definitely keep this in mind as I work to develop any future interventions.

I would like to know more/ discuss more about designing proper focus group questions and gatekeeper interview questions. I think this is one of the most applicable parts of the PH curriculum, and I am really glad you included it. A mock in class focus group might be an interesting/effective learning experience, as we could get lots of feedback and see how one might go about actually conducting one.

TTFN!