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Elsbeth Lions

Inquiry Project Report


How has the Inquiry Project experience advanced my understandings of what good health
education might be, and why?

For the Inquiry Project, my group and I focussed on discussing the use and abuse of illicit drugs in
Australia, through the use of the sociological analysis model, constructed by Charles Wright Mills (as
cited in Germov, 2014, p. 7). With the use of the sociological analysis, we discussed: the history of
illicit drugs and the development of illegal drug laws; the effects of drug abuse in different cultural
settings, such as in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural societies and low socioeconomic
groups; the development of structural legislations and laws to aid prevention, as well as the laws we
have in place today; and the critical aspect of considering how Australia can improve to better general
public health.

This project was able to help me develop my own understanding of how the sociological analysis (as
cited in Germov, 2014, p. 7) works and how it is used to research a specific topic. I found that working
in a group and being able to share my own ideas and my misunderstanding was helpful to me, because
each member would help to explain and ensure that I understood, if I was having trouble with the
project. I was also able to develop my knowledge further about Australia as a country, as we
researched Australias views on illicit drugs, and the strategies and laws that have been put in place to
help prevent harm and promote change, to better general public health. I think group work was able
to help me better my own communication and help me to improve the way that I teach people and
explain my ideas. I found that throughout the project, the group tended to look to me for direction
and guidance if they were having trouble, and I found that as we worked together, I was improving
the way that I helped each person to advance their work and improving the way that I guided the
groups understanding of the topic.

I believe that the group that I worked with for this project was a well organised collection of people,
and each member was more than willing to contribute to the best of their ability, to ensure that we
gave a good presentation. One of the things that was extremely helpful to our group in completing
this topic was social media. Each of the people in my group connected on Facebook, and we were able
to create a group chat where we could easily discuss the direction we were going for the project, any
misunderstandings or problems we were having with research or the topic in general, and we were
able to help each other out, without having to be physically together. Social media really helped us to
be connected easily, and this ensured that we could easily communicate to complete the assignment.
Another thing that worked well in our group throughout this project was that most of the members
were willing to meet in their free time to go over the project in depth and discuss what we needed to
do, what we needed to research, and how we could improve our work. Even though communicating
through social media was efficient, we found that to complete to project to the best of our ability, we
needed to meet face-to-face at least once to finalise our ideas and this would enable us to link these
ideas even better. This helped us to give a successful presentation because it allowed us to work
collaboratively and effectively due to the communication being easier, while we were all together.

One of the difficulties we had during preparing and researching for our presentation was that for one
of the group members, it was hard to meet up face-to-face with the rest of the group in their free
time. As a result of this, one of my group members was never able to make it to our group meetings.
One of our main goals for the project was to ensure that each of the sections of our sociological
Elsbeth Lions

analysis linked together and due to the fact that one of the members could not make it, it became
slightly harder to link the historical, cultural, structural, and critical factors revolving around illicit drugs
in Australia, because of the uncertainty of what the absent group member was going to say and what
they were going to present. This had a small negative impact on our project because the absent
members research did not link all that well to the rest of the group; however, the information
presented was relevant to the topic and aided the presentation to be well done.

I believe that good health education for the public, can be improved by increasing awareness, and to
aid improvement, we should become highly focused on bettering health awareness among the public.
People need to be aware of the harms and risks of using illicit drugs, and other health issues and
benefits, as well as being aware of where to get help and how to improve yourself to better individual
health. The World Health Organization (2017) emphasises on the importance of public awareness of
health through health literacy. WHO believes that:

Health literacy means more than being able to read pamphlets and successfully make
appointments. By improving people's access to health information and their capacity to
use it effectively, health literacy is critical to empowerment ("WHO | Track 2: Health
Literacy and Health Behaviour", 2017).

This statement truly highlights the important nature of health education and the way that having a
health literate country can improve public health. As a result of this, individuals will be enabled to
make changes for themselves, to improve personal health, and, in turn, create a community that has
good health. Health education should be able to raise awareness of the social, economic and
environmental determinants of health, and be directed towards the promotion of individual and
collective actions which may lead to modification of these determinants (Nutbeam, 2000). Australia
needs to be much more direct about the way we promote good health because education about
health and being literate about all aspects that are included in health are the key determinants of
health outcomes (Kickbusch, 2001).

A way to ensure that health education leads to health literacy is to provide health promotion that is
done in a way that is not on or to people but is done by or with people (Nutbeam, 2000). This
strategy helps to raise more awareness about health because it becomes inclusive and interactive for
all people, and by making the public be more involved, they may learn more about health and health
aspects, and incorporate this health literacy into their own lives. Raising more awareness about illicit
drug use and abuse and its harmful impacts can make people more aware, and enable them to make
changes and teach others, empowering more and more citizens to be health literate.

To conclude, the enquiry project experience had advanced my understandings of what good health
education might be because it has enabled me to discover more about the specific health issue of illicit
drug use and abuse in Australia, and has furthered my understanding that awareness and continued
health promotion is key to developing a more health literate country. Becoming more health literate,
will assist Australia to create better overall public health.
Elsbeth Lions

Reference List:

(Germov, J. (2014). Chapter 1: Imagining Health Problems as Social Issues. In J. Germov, Second
Opinion: An Introduction to Health Sociology (5th ed., pp. 5-19). Melbourne: Oxford University
Press.)

(Kickbusch, I. S. (2001). Health literacy: addressing the health and education divide. Health
promotion international, 16(3), 289-297.)

(Nutbeam, D. (2000). Health literacy as a public health goal: a challenge for contemporary health
education and communication strategies into the 21st century. Health promotion
international, 15(3), 259-267.)

(WHO | Track 2: Health Literacy and Health Behaviour. (2017). World Health Organization. Retrieved
10 June 2017, from http://www.who.int/healthpromotion/conferences/7gchp/track2/en/)

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