For my second post I will be talking about health as well as
mentioning a few theories promoting health. Health can be defined in many different
ways, one being “the complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being
and not just the absence of disease or infirmity.” The promotion of health is
the use of discipline specific techniques to assist people in achieving their
health related goals. Occupational therapy directed health promotion is the
client centered use of occupations, adaptations to context, or alteration of
context to maximize individuals’, families’, communities’, and groups’ pursuit
of health and quality of life. Health promotion is a process of maximizing
health through structured interventions. Before an appropriate theory can be
selected for a health promotion initiative, a clear understanding of the health
and occupation needs and desires of those being served is required. One of the
first and most widely used models in health promotion is called the Health
Belief Model (HBM). The basis of this model is the balancing of threats with
barriers of taking the recommended action and the potential benefits. A key
component to this model is self-efficacy. Another model is the Social Cognitive
Theory (SCT). The SCT is a model that is a good fit for occupational therapy
health promotion program development and evaluation due to its emphasis on “how”
to change behavior, the importance placed on self-efficacy, and mastery gained
through doing. This type of approach promotes effective self-management of
health habits that keep people healthy through their lifespan.
For class today, we were asked to listen to a podcast before class titled The First Cow. The speaker was Abeny Kucha, a woman from southeastern Africa who has an amazing story. Her village was destroyed by war and for years she bounced from refugee camp to refugee camp walking and traveling for over eight years. Luckily she and her family made it to America. Listening to her story really opened my eyes to just how lucky I am to have the life that I have. When they first arrived they were taken to this apartment and told it was their new home… she expressed that the word home meant more to her than most could understand. Her children had never had a home, they had never been able to sleep in peace without any worry. She spoke of how they had no idea what orange soda was or what a fire alarm was, things that you never even second guess or need to think about can be completely foreign to others. She also mentioned how they had two couches in the living room and how no...
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