Peer health education

Introduction

- Effective for/in:

-Promoting healthy behaviors amongst young target populations.

- Schools as a strategy to provide health education.

- Addressing risk factors for chronic diseases (HIV, sexual health promotion).

- Peer influence:

- Influence over people who are at risk for chronic disease (Diet and physical activity participation (Finnerty, Reeves, Dabinett, Jeanes & Vögele, 2010).

- Young population: Social network of peers have strong influence on and individual behavior.

- Having a friend "in the know"

- That gives advice (based on their knowledge and experiences).

- Has common concerns with the target population.

- Can identify with that means to be young/or the knowledge a target population has.

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Peer-lead health education

Empowerment for young people:

- Opportunity to participate in activities that are beneficial for peer educators, and the audiences.

- Access: tools, information, services for health improvement, prevention.

Create awareness about risk factors and its relation with chronic diseases.

- Qualitative study about the experiences of health educator using informal discussions.

- High School learners around risk factors for chronic diseases in different lifestyles.

- How this information was shared among peers and teenager's social networks.

Theories of Learning

- Constructivism:

- "knowledge not as truths to be transmitted or discovered, but as emergent, knowledge not as truths to be transmitted or discovered, but as constructed collectively" (Duffy & Cunniham, 1996).

- Collaborative space to dialogue: learning environment

- Analyze the complexities of the context.

- Avoid over-simplification of task and instruction.

Social negociation: Collective construction by making people to participate and interact with each other.

Methods

This study was part of a larger study which aimed to improve the knowledge of high school learners about risk factors for chronic diseases.

- Site: West Cape Africa.

- Goal: Empower young people to provide health-related information to their peers.

- Provide them capacity-building (communication, and group facilitation skills

Research Design

- Mixed Methods, using explanatory sequential research.

- Data collection tools: In-depth interviews. (qualitative).

Evaluation of the learners after the program implementation (quantitative).

- Participants: 10 Peer educators from selected schools. (8 females, 2 males)

Procedures

- Training:

- One-day training workshop exposed to content and resource materials.

- Participants had to develop knowledge related to concepts of chronic disease (lifestyle &risk factors).

- Interact personally with someone that had knowledge. Make them identify risk factors in their own life (Frantz, 2011).

- Familiarize with the aims of the project and their role in the process.

- Peer educators were allowed to add their own experiences in their communities to the training materials and the program.

- Use role-play to practice their skills and content accuracy.

- Peer educators were paired in each of their schools to promote their confidence in their performance.

Program implementation

- Time-frame: 5 weeks.

- Target population: 8th grader learners.

- Total reached: 350 learners.

- Compensation: Allowance to cover participation, labor, traveling and food.

- Pre, and post evaluation questionnaries applied to the learners.

Results

• Mixed feelings:
• Feelings of the peer educators influence the program.
• 1st: discouraging and frustrating
• 2nd: Excitement and achievement.
• Constraints: Logistical limitation (equipment, class organization).
• At the end: enjoyable process and final outcomes.
• Appreciate support of teachers.
• Personal growth and experience:
• Evidence of reciprocal appreciation: Opportunity they had impact on how learners, and the impact learners had on them.
• Raised their own awareness about the influence: how sharing experiences and identifying solutions for some challenges.
• How self-reflection of the peer educators is important, and is a missing aspect in the training process.

Results

Personal growth and experience

-Acting as a "role model" also contributed about their own accomplishments.

- Learn about the risk factors learners have.

- Wanting new opportunities to keep providing information.

- Feeling challenged, and how this affected their confidence.

Personal Reflection on the Presentation of the Course

- Implementing interventions: getting familiarized with the content.

- Improving communication skills.

- Ability to review research and develop critical reviews.

Discussion

- Peer-led health education strategies:

-Enhance health promotion success.

- Training and resources as critical factors for positive outcomes.

- Former learners are better health educators.

- Contributions of the study:

- New challenges and implications for designing peer education models for health promotion.

- Reflexivity of how the new proposed behavior is reachable to audiences in their current reality/circumstances.

- Propose alternatives and collaboration for finding suitable solutions

- Social influence: Peer educators most likely become role models for learners.

- How having professional health educators in schools can impact prevention of chronic diseases by training constantly peer health educators.

Conclusions

- Effective health prevention strategy.

- Collaborative research and training are key for peer health education the programs success.

- Empowerment of young people can happen through health education.

- Criteria to choose health educators should match the values/behavior that the program wants to promote.

- Importance of social networks over individual behavior.

How peer health models could be useful to your project/program?

UNM'S PRC: Brainstorming