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Macropost #4

In my last week with the practicum and working with JoCo Angels, I have got to learn about how to interact with students and to be able to educate them on something like opioid abuse. This practicum has helped me communicate public health content to middle schoolers through the brochures we created and the video interaction and getting to speak to the students in person. Summarizing what we have been able to accomplish in the past months, we were able to go to two different middle schools that were part of Johnston County. In each middle school, we walked around and judged the posters that each homeroom class created with the students. We wanted to leave the students with resources and ways to look for signs of overdose, so we created a brochure. The purpose of the brochure was to make sure that we left a message for the teachers and students on the importance of preventing opioid abuse and drug addiction. We also created ribbons to give out to the students during red ribbon week. Our focus of the red ribbon week was to bring awareness, and I got to see the issues that students deal with in their daily lives. Aside from ribbon week, in the first couple of weeks, I went to an overdose awareness event and with this event, I got to see the community involvement in raising awareness in Johnston County. Different groups of the organization showed up and they had different worship and people from church coming together and lighting a candle for those who have lost their lives to overdose. They also had people give their testimonies, it was a very touching moment for me. I knew that opioid abuse was a problem but getting to see 5 huge posters of people who lost their lives, really opened my eyes to see how any people are being affected by this problem. Another event that we went to was the 12 peace cornerstone, we get to sit with the fellowship group and hear different worship songs, prayers, and also testimonies. They have a lot of support for each other, again, that community build is so strong. They have support from one another and are very focused on preventing opioid abuse or drug addiction, or other personal issues. Unfortunately, we were not able to go speak with people in wake monarch because they did not have a lot of students for us to speak to, so it got pushed to the spring semester. I think that would have been a great opportunity to talk with the students who deal with drug addiction and get their feedback on what they find helpful and give them positive speeches to support and advocate for them. COVID-19 did impact a lot of our goals this semester, however, we did still manage to accomplish something like planning red ribbon week. As for me, I hope that for my next practicum, I continue to do something with education and nutrition. Not only is opioid abuse a problem, but also obesity. A lot of people are not educated on how to take in proper nutrients. It is either eat too much or do not eat as much in their way of understanding. Overall, getting to be part of this practicum was not only important for me to work on preventing such a problem but also to learn and educate myself on the issue. I believe that this practicum is very important especially for the project that we created and hopefully, created a network for the team for future purposes. Getting the student involved is very critical especially at a young age, they need to be educated on these problems rather than ignoring them. I wish that for future projects that team could also involve the parents. Connecting the parents with their children is very important. It helps build a safe relationship for the student to talk to their family about issues that they deal with, to seek their assistance in getting help and treatment. Getting to educate the family on the signs of addiction is important because they will be aware of the problem.  I am very glad that I got to join JoCo angels as part of my first practicum in the graduate program. The team leaders were very excited and generous for letting students from Campbell join them in raising awareness. I know that this red ribbon week will be a very successful event every year given the feedback we got from teachers and students.

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Last week was Red Ribbon week and we went to two different middle schools and judged their posters for the pizza and ice cream party.

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Macropost #3

This past week was red ribbon week, it was a very successful event overall. I had a lot of fun with the team planning the event, judging posters, and interacting with the students. We wanted to leave the students with resources and ways to look for signs of overdose, so we created a brochure. The purpose of the brochure was to make sure that we left a message for the teachers and students on the importance of preventing opioid abuse and drug addiction. Our focus of the red ribbon week was to bring awareness, and I can say that as a student who was not very familiar with many of the issues that students deal in their daily lives, this event has affected me. I am very proud that I was able to be a part of a team that was able to reach young children with such an important message. We were able to go to two different middle schools that were part of Johnston County. In each middle school, we were to walk around and judge the posters that each homeroom class created. I got to see how creative middle schoolers are, their posters were beyond amazing. Their knowledge on drug addiction and how they incorporated it into the poster was unbelievable, I was shocked. We got to select the top winner and the two runners up for pizza and ice cream party. One of the school counselors were telling us how excited the students were about the prize and that they really enjoyed doing the posters. This practicum has helped me communicate public health content to middle schoolers through the brochures we created and the video interaction and getting to speak to the students in person. Again, with COVID-19, it caused a lot of limitation for us to be able to reach more schools, specifically high schoolers. High school students who live in rural face stigmatism that is associated with drug addiction so by helping them understand that prevention is the key and that they should not let fear of being judged affect them from getting the proper treatment. However, we were not able to do that but still getting the interaction with middle schoolers was very helpful. We as a team were very glad that we were able to interact with the students and teachers in two different middle schools. Another thing that we worked was giving the students red ribbon pins which was not easy to make, it took a lot of hours to create but at the end it was worth it because it matched the whole theme of red ribbon week. As in the feedback we got, the students were very happy with the event and of course those who won the poster contest were very excited about it. Some of the students in the middle schools left us their comments about red ribbon week. A lot of them involved talking about how they learned a lot, how they never want to do drugs and want to make their family proud, and some had families who dealt with such issues, so they were able to connect. There are many more comments that were left by the students and the teachers that will be shared in the practicum presentation. I know that the teachers and the principle are planning on continuing this event with JOCO Angels which is a very beneficial thing for the team. They hope to reach many more school in the future to raise awareness on drug addiction. We do have two more events that are very similar to red ribbon week that are coming up and I am very excited to be a part of. One includes talking to students and sending a positive message to a school that works with drug addiction. The other event is with the church community, which I have gone to one of their worships before and heard a couple of testimonials.  In this event, we plan on sharing the red ribbon week video with the fellowship of the church and just getting to talk and connect with them. In summary, as a team we have accomplished our goal of the project as in what I have discussed with red ribbon week. We did start off with a rough start, but we still managed to reach out goal and to raise awareness for young students. This is something that I can take into my future career as my interest in education increases, especially when knowing that a change is occurring.

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Macropost #2

With only a couple lefts week of the practicum, I got to learn a lot about the different work that JOCO Angels does with other organization that focuses on teens who struggled with opioid abuse. A lot of the issues that they face has to do with daily stress and many other socioeconomic factors. My team and I will be working with two different middle schools within Johnston County to educate the students on peer pressure, drug overdose, smoking and drinking during red ribbon week. This will demonstrate applying leadership into guiding the student into making appropriate decisions regarding their health. This week, me and my classmate worked on creating a poster that includes Halloween theme for the students but incorporating drug abuse language to deliver the message of how drugs are dangerous in a creative way that fits their age and understanding, specifically for middle school class. Some of the challenges that we faced to reach this point of the project related to COVID-19 preventing us to do many activities in person with the students to fulfill the purpose of the project. Some of original plans were to do in person activities with the students and to present in person some important information, however with many restriction of COVID-19, changes will have to occur by finding solution and working around the original plan. We also are working on creating a presentation that can include resources for students who live rural areas and are likely to avoid seeking medical help. Part of the project is going to middle school homerooms and throwing a pizza and ice cream party for the students as part of Red Ribbon Week. Not only that but to award the best poster which we as a team will judge with a prize. We plan to do so at the end of October and Beginning of November. As we have learned in our rural health class, anonymity is not an easy thing for rural people to have in that everybody knows everybody. Stigmatism comes to be a part of the process, the idea of being an addict as a negative term. I plan to start attending a Monday service that involves hearing people’s testimonies and worship. I have never been to such events at churches so that will be my first time experiencing something different and hearing about how others dealt with such a difficult situation. This project is important to be completed because adolescents are suffering from addiction, and some have taken their own lives because of the power that it has over them and because they do not have a lot of resources and education on prevention. Therefore, it is very important that we reach those of younger age to help them understand the danger of misusing opioids and that seeking treatment is very important. There is no reason for any parent to see their child suffer and die from taking opioids because it all started with pain prescriptions or other types of prescriptions. Educating students on how to avoid peer pressure during middle school is also important because the decision that a student takes can impact their future in one moment. Not only is talking to the students important but reaching the parents is also needed because they need to be aware of the kid’s life and understand what the problem is coming from. They have a hard time finding help for their loved ones with addiction so taking a big role in trying to help them find resources that are near them such as treatment centers and others can help them provide help for their kids and others who are struggling in the community. With this project/presentation, we are able to show the students different scenarios of peer pressure, drug overdose, smoking and substance abuse in both a negative and a positive approach to each kind of situation. We as a team took part by incorporating our own slides that explained how each scenario was a negative representation and what are ways to prevent such issues or scenario. Working as a team and brainstorming the scenarios and the slides for the video really helped us bring creativity to the video we created.  Overall, I am excited to be part of this project and to educate the students and make a change. I also believe that this project will bring future possibility for projects for JOCO Angels with old and new schools to help bring this project together and hopefully involve the parents too.

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We made brochures with resources and ways to prevent overdose and included statistics and local resources. This brochure will be handed out during red ribbon week to each home room in the middle schools.

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Made red ribbons for the students at the middle schools we will be visiting during red ribbon week.

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I worked on creating a video for red ribbon week with my classmates that shows scenarios/clips involving peer pressure, smoking, overdose and alcohol and how to prevent it. #teamangels

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This week, I went with the JOCO Angels team to an event that is held every Monday at a church to worship and hear about people’s testimonies. It was a great experience.

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We worked on making an example poster for the students for Red Ribbon Week #teamangels

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We met to discuss the poster ideas and videos we will be creating for Red Ribbon Week!

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Macropost #1

In these first couple of weeks of my practicum, I participated in an overdose awareness day that JOCO Angels planned with other parts of the community to bring awareness to the public on opioid addiction. That was the first event that brought my attention to the big issue that rural areas are facing currently, the opioid epidemic. In this event, people shared stories and prayers among their community. They had a couple of posters of people who are victims of opioid abuse, and it affected me personally because coming from an urban area, I did not realize that so many people were struggling and given that rural areas have a low density of population and are most likely to geographically isolated, it makes it so much for difficult for the individuals to seek help with their addiction problems. Before starting the program, I did know as much as I am starting to learn by researching and working with a team every other week to complete this project to impact others' life and prevent opioid abuse. Some of the challenges that we discussed in groups and were mentioned by the team are how they are barriers to seek prevention for addiction. Some had to do with not having many prevention centers in rural areas or having to drive a long distance to get access to one. In the first meeting of the team, we were asked to pick a topic to focus on for the practicum. Our group wanted to pick educating middle and high schoolers on opioid addiction and prevention. Also, this process would include talking to the parents on looking for signs of addiction and helping them look for treatment centers for addiction near them. One of the competencies that we plan to focus on is selecting communication strategies for different audiences and sectors. Given that our focus will be to communicate with middle, high schoolers and parents, we plan to provide different content for each of our audiences since it would not be appropriate to give the same high school presentation to a middle schooler. And for parents, we would be talking about different content other than what we would be talking to the student about. The plan is to communicate through presentations, surveys, polls, and other interactive activities to get involvement from the students and to see what they know. The problems that we plan to focus on are the education of the misuse of opioids, help those who suffer from opioid addiction get the treatment needed, and provide them with resources within the area that they live in. At the moment, a problem that we are facing is having to reach the school systems to let us talk to their students, especially with COVID-19 still being an issue. With COVID-19, there are chances that we might work with students and schools through online websites rather than online which can make it difficult to send the message and get interaction from the students. Another option that we can look into while we try to figure out how to reach the schools with COVID-19, is to participate in student clubs that deal with mental issues and inclusion clubs. Although we would not be reaching all the students as we could have with an entire class in a certain public school, we would still try to impact those students who are dealing with mental health issues. This project is very important and is critical to be completed because adolescents are suffering from addiction, and some have taken their own lives because of the power that it has. Therefore, it is very important that we reach those of younger age to help them understand the danger of misusing opioids and that seeking treatment is very important. There is no reason for any parent to see their child suffer and die from taking opioids because it all started with pain prescriptions or other types of prescriptions. Not only is talking to the students important but reaching the parents is also needed because they need to be aware of the kid’s life and understand what the problem is coming from. They have a hard time finding help for their loved ones with addiction so taking a big role in trying to help them find resources.

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Data analysis for opioids abuse in NC

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Week 4 group meeting, we created an email draft to send to school systems. #teamangels

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Team Angels group worked on picking a topic (Educational Event for middle/high schoolers including parents options), we focused on data analysis, event planning, advocacy, and communication.

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#overdoseawarenessday #teamangels