Sunday, August 31, 2014

HEALTHY HOMES PROJECT: Educational Sessions

EDUCATIONAL SESSIONS

The Healthy Homes project was structured to include a series of educational sessions to instruct mothers on the five main topics that were selected by the community to improve the health of young children in the district of El Tallan; Diarrhea Illnesses, Respiratory Infections and Nutrition and Early Childhood Development.  These topics were presented during a series of four once-monthly sessions in September, October, and November of 2013 and January of 2014.

Eight volunteer community health promoters agreed to participate in the execution of the project.  Health promoters were paired up for mutual support and encouragement, and each pair was assigned to present one of the four topics covered during one of the educational sessions. 

I worked directly with each pair to develop a session plan for presenting each topic, and we created visual tools and handouts for the sessions.  Each session plan included a presentation of information, real-life examples and demonstrations, and opportunities for participants to practice new behaviors and demonstrate knowledge.  At the end of session, I led a discussion of ways to integrate the newly learned practices into the home and expectations of the upcoming house visit.  The sessions were designed to not only encourage the adoption of healthy practices among caregivers of small children, but also address the barriers to change previously expressed by mothers, and reported by health center staff or by the health promoters.

Following the educational sessions, each participating family received a house visit from one of the community health promoters who had been assigned to the family.  The house visits were intended to monitor the progress of the mother to adopt new behaviors and reinforce the knowledge gained during the educational sessions.  The health promoters were provided monitoring forms that I created according to the learning objectives of the educational sessions, and they received training on conducting house visits from the health center staff.


(Original group of health promoters for the district of El Tallan)


Please continue reading to find out more about the four educational sessions:

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