Exponential amount of learning is what I would describe this course so far. Reflecting on this course, I was really surprised and felt very patriotic learning about the Ottawa Charter. I never knew that the term health promotion was first proposed and originated from Canada. Furthermore, I always saw health promotion and population health as interchangeable terms, but this course has helped me recognize the differences between them and highlight how they can interact with one another through the use of the Population Health Promotion model. Additionally, a lot of the learning that has happen in this course for me has been vastly due to the diverse professional backgrounds of my classmates. There are so many different health professions and viewpoints that are being highlighted in this course. This greatly helps with expanding my knowledge in this course.
As a respiratory therapist, vaping is a health issue that I am extremely concerned about. It has become increasingly common for individuals to vape now. A study by Tehrani et al, (2022) found that globally 23% of men and 11% of females currently vape. Additionally, it has been found that a vast majority of individuals that vape are adolescents and young adults. The Government of Canada (2024) found that 14% of Canadians aged 15 – 19 and 20% of Canadians aged 20 – 24 vape. Vaping has been associated with many adverse health diseases especially respiratory diseases. Vaping has been known to increase the likelihood of many respiratory disease processes like asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, E-cigarette Vaping Acute Lung Injury (EVALI), bronchiolitis obliterans and lung cancer (Tehrani et al, 2022). However, many individuals believe that vaping is not harmful and much safer than smoking cigarettes. The spread of health misinformation has drastic increased with the use of social media. People are able to access information quicker and easier now. Consequently, the information being accessed is not always right. This is one of the biggest difficulties that is faced by health promotion.
Going forward in this course, I hope to learn and utilize different theories and interventions to help implement change in the prevalence of vaping. I specifically want to learn how best to target adolescent vape users and promote vaping cessation strategies that would best resonate with them. I hope that this course and my health promotion project will help translate into something that can be placed into action.
References:
Government of Canada. (2024) About Vaping. Retrieved from https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/smoking-tobacco/vaping.html
Tehrani, H., Rajabi, A., Ghelichi-Ghojogh, M., Nejatian, M., & Jafari, A. (2022). The prevalence of electronic cigarettes vaping globally: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Archives of Public Health, 80.
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