Health Advocacy Project – Evaluation

In response to assessment task two for EHR305 I have created a workshop designed to
satisfy the learn objective and outcomes of the Life Ready program as outlined on the NSW
education website (NSW department of education, 2019). The workshop focus is mental
health and has been specifically target toward stage six students of Parkes Highschool in
Parkes NSW.

Parkes High School is a government funded comprehensive high school located in Central
West New South Wales. According to data published on the My School website, PHS is
classified as being outer regional and has an ICSEA value of 922 (My School, 2020).
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the median income of Parkes residents
is below the national average in all categories (ABS, 2016). Based on this data, mental
health was the specific focus of this project. According to data published by the
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare; low socioeconomic status and regional/rural
residents are identified as being at risk populations for mental health related issues.
(AHIW, 2020) Furthermore, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) people are more
likely to experience high to very high levels of mental distress than non-indigenous
people (AIHW, 2020). As Parkes High School has a 19% ATSI population this
additionally increases the need for high quality mental health literacy among the school
population. It is based on these facts and figures that mental health was determined to
be a priority subject for these particular students and as such the focus topic of this
project.

At the beginning of the development of this workshop my end goal was to create and
deliver a highly creative, informative and thought provoking workshop for stage 6 that
would facilitate the development of critical health literacy surrounding mental health and
equip students with the necessary knowledge and skills to effectively manage their
own mental health, actively reject stigmas surrounding the topic and advocate for
mental health in their current context and beyond. Throughout the development of the
workshop my goal remained the same however the ways to achieve this goal altered
slightly in line with academic literature, feasibility concerns and feedback from qualified
educators at the focus school.

In order to create a workshop that would have a positive and lasting impact on students it
needed to be based on quality research. In order to achieve this several scholarly articles
were reviewed and their findings shaped the way this project was developed. The first stage
of this involved assessing the effectiveness of current health promotion programs in
Australia. Articles published by (George, M. W. et al, 2014) and (Cavioni, 2020) examine the
effectiveness of two different health promotion programs implemented with a focus on
mental health and recorded similar results. The consensus being that mental health
promotion needs to be facilitated by confident educators who have a high level
understanding of the content themselves, content should be reliable and the program
should be designed to meet the action areas of the Ottawa charter. Information shouldn’t
just be presented in students but rather involve the students being active in the lessons.

Similarly the other scholarly resources referenced during the action plan as listed agreed
with this structure. For this reason this program was designed with the intention of have
cooperative learning spaces where students facilitate their own learning through discussion
and engagement with the workshop facilitator and their peers. Sessions where developed to
be sequential and interrelated with one another to solidify learning.

One difficulty encountered during the development of this project was the time constraints.
With only a 60-minute window for each session it was difficult to go in to greater detail with
content and also have fun, meaningful activities for students to participate. For this reason,
some of the content needed to be reduced to enable enough time for students to
participate in the activities for each session rather than sit through lecture style learning as
this is less effective for health promotion learning according to the literature above. ‘

During the initial planning stages of this project, I consulted with physical health teachers at
Parkes High School to get some insight into what they thought would be an effective
workshop for their students. According to these educators, it would be beneficial to create
inclusive, discussion-based learning where the students are included in the learning and
teaching process. This insight lead to the implementation of discussions to every session and
to the development of session five’s content where students are to become the teachers for
their peers by educating them on mental health through the advocacy project.

Following the completion of the planning phase, I sought feedback from these same
teachers. The overwhelming feedback was positive with comments on the quality of the
content, student involvement and progressive structuring of lesson content. One
improvement that was suggested was to add some real-world examples of the content that
is relevant and interesting to the students. With this feedback the inclusion of the rap music
video as an example for mental health advocacy and support services was included into
session four. If I was to create a workshop like this again I would endeavour to include more
age appropriate pop culture to engage students.

After the workshop was finished and uploaded to the website I asked the PDHPE teachers to
explore some of the content and let me know how this would work practically for their
students, one improvement suggested would be to remember that students will have
learned about mental health throughout their earlier schooling years, so while it would be
great to give them a refresher on the basics, some of the content could be more in depth
and build upon their existing knowledge. If I were to edit this workshop again I would take
this into account and look at expanding upon ideas and going into greater depth on the
topic.

Overall the development of this program was an exceptional learning experience in lesson
N

development and coordinating a quality informative workshop. To improve on the quality

and relevance of this program for future implementation would be to make it relevant to
the students through the inclusion of relevant examples interesting to them, to take in to
account the previous knowledge of the intended group and adjust content accordingly.
Additionally research suggests that quality health promotion in schools occurs most
effectively when there is a multifaceted approach to teaching. To improve this workshop, I
would implement the Health Promoting School (HPS) framework to further the impact of
the program. To do this I would endeavour to create partnerships with local services by
having guest speakers for some sessions as well as family engagement in some sessions and
activities. On top of this, I would also add a component to improve the school environment
for students; one idea for to achieve this would be a session activity where students create a
mural for the school in a public area that promotes mental health to improve school ethos
as a whole.

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