I have been in my current position as Project Manager for Following the Life Course with the
Barren River District Health Department for about a year now, having relocated
from Portland, Oregon to Bowling Green, Kentucky. I have been working in public
health for the last five years or so.
What are you most
excited about or what is your favorite aspect of your project on reproductive
life planning?
One of my favorite aspects of our project on reproductive life planning
is that it allows us to collaborate with partner agencies, such as area
hospitals or local mental health agencies. I think that it’s great that we want
to engage in capacity building, and that the grant challenges us to move beyond our traditional programmatic “silos.” I
think that it is easy for us to focus on personal accountability in our daily
practice, whereas this project seems to encourage us to balance the recognition
that behavioral change and personal responsibility are important with a deeper understanding
of the ways in which behaviors and choices might be structured.
What do you anticipate
will be the biggest challenge with this project?
I anticipate that the project will bring with it a few
different challenges. The first has to do with the comparative dearth of
literature on the social marketing and programmatic instruments and tools that
have been used out in the field, along with their reception by the patient
population. I still find myself wanting to know more about what kinds of
slogans other programs have used, what kinds of questions or items have been
utilized in other survey instruments, and what types of resources have been offered.
I would love to know more about the contexts in which these programs have been
deployed (e.g. target audience demographics, geographic region(s), capacity of
pilot site(s), etc.).
As with other areas of public health, I think that it can
prove challenging to develop a cogent narrative or “story” around an issue as
complex as the Life Course, especially given its many attendant concepts (e.g.
trajectories, adverse programming, etc.) This is the type of challenge that
pervades our lives as public health practitioners, however – in other words,
how to “re-frame” the clinical conversation in a way that is both nuanced and
easily digestible by a larger audience. As a corollary, I think that it can prove challenging to
inspire one’s peers to address some of these more distal factors, especially
amidst the constraints and exigencies of ever shrinking public health budgets
and staffing shortages. Change can be intimidating enough, even in the most secure
of times. In this way, I feel that addressing concerns – however well-intended,
misplaced, or unfounded – about the evidence base undergirding such an approach
(e.g. in staff involved, time spent, impact, etc.) becomes very important.
I think that some misperceptions might also exist about the
receptiveness or initiative of some audiences to this information. For this
reason, I believe that it’s crucial to structure one’s content in such a way
that it is tailored to the intended audience, and speaks to peoples’ lived
experiences. One area of thought that I find to be particularly apt in this
regard is popular education. As it is related to public health, this notion of
popular education encourages people to try and understand the root causes of
poor health, using techniques such as cooperative learning.
Can
you share any books, articles, websites
that help with your work?
One Key Question http://www.onekeyquestion.org/
Levis
DM, Westbrook K. A content analysis of preconception health education
materials: characteristics, strategies, and clinical-behavioral components. American journal of health promotion. 2013;27:S36
Frey
KA, Files JA. Preconception healthcare: what women know and believe. Maternal and child health journal. 2006;10:S73-77. link
to free article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1592249/
