Healthy Heroes
Child & Adolescent Health Education
Team Composition: Co-run by the Association of Medical Students Ireland - NUIG (AMSI-NUIG) committee and the NUI Galway Paediatric Society committee. Any third-level healthcare student is welcome to volunteer, as long as they have been Garda vetted.
Project Mission: To teach health promotion and health education to local primary and secondary school students and their teachers through interactive, professional-led workshops.
Project Vision: To encourage the Irish government and department of education to a) implement changes to encourage more healthy behaviour in schools, b) teach more health science lessons, and c) to inspire teachers to take the Healthy Hero workshops back into their classrooms.
Objectives:
Facilitation Materials:
Project Mission: To teach health promotion and health education to local primary and secondary school students and their teachers through interactive, professional-led workshops.
Project Vision: To encourage the Irish government and department of education to a) implement changes to encourage more healthy behaviour in schools, b) teach more health science lessons, and c) to inspire teachers to take the Healthy Hero workshops back into their classrooms.
Objectives:
- To cover basic nutrition using the latest Irish food pyramid, and to dispel common diet myths.
- To teach fun, novel forms of physical activity through specialized workshops such as yoga, zumba and cross-fit.
- To teach functional human anatomy through a ‘pin the organ on the body’ game
- To introduce students to the harms and dangers of drugs/alcohol/tobacco (for the secondary school students.)
Facilitation Materials:
- Food pyramid
- ‘Pin the organ on the body’ human anatomy game
- Stereo/speakers for music
- Pens, paper
- Approximately 1 healthcare student volunteer for every 10 children
- ‘Goody bag’ items such as fruit, yogurt, skipping ropes, recipes, lunchbox planners and other health-promoting objects
- Decorations e.g. table cloths, Balloons, Poster
- Cutlery, utensils and plates for food
Project Description
Healthy Heroes is a jam-packed two day event, co-run annually by the Association of Medical Students Ireland - NUIG (AMSI-NUIG) and NUI Galway Paediatric Society committees, and staffed by over sixty healthcare student volunteers. It focuses on teaching hundreds of primary and secondary school students from County Galway about the importance of being a “Healthy Hero”, and taking care of one’s health - mentally and physically.
Both days consist of workshops on the main campus in NUIG, run by experts in the fields of nutrition, exercise, mental health, physiology and anatomy. The workshops are assisted by healthcare students, whom can also gain experience and knowledge from this event.
Healthy Heroes is a jam-packed two day event, co-run annually by the Association of Medical Students Ireland - NUIG (AMSI-NUIG) and NUI Galway Paediatric Society committees, and staffed by over sixty healthcare student volunteers. It focuses on teaching hundreds of primary and secondary school students from County Galway about the importance of being a “Healthy Hero”, and taking care of one’s health - mentally and physically.
Both days consist of workshops on the main campus in NUIG, run by experts in the fields of nutrition, exercise, mental health, physiology and anatomy. The workshops are assisted by healthcare students, whom can also gain experience and knowledge from this event.
Reason for the project
The primary motivation behind this event stems from our belief that Ireland’s obesity epidemic will not cure itself. Ireland is set to be the most obese nation in Europe by 2030 (WHO, 2017). In the past two decades, the numbers of overweight and obese persons in Ireland have doubled (Morgan et al, 2008). Only 40% of us now have a healthy weight (DoH, 2016). The Overweight Ireland 2009 report shows that at age 13, 13% boys and 9% girls are overweight. Medical students should take initiative to raise awareness on this issue. Promoting healthy eating at a young age can help to prevent diseases later in life, such as type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis or hypertension. In a digital age where many claim to be a healthy lifestyle expert, Healthy Heroes offers students understandable, factual information on how to best look after their own health. Through effective take home skills taught by experts this event helps to instil healthy habits in students, especially from a young age. Healthy Heroes is a fun and interactive form of preventative medicine and is really essential in all ages. This is why we’ve designed a teen specific day, to revive their core knowledge of mental, physical and nutritional health and moreover, add to it! Likewise with alcohol and tobacco abuse becoming widespread among Irish young people, with 16% to 29.9% of teens as young as 13 having already started smoking, the importance of constant education in these matters cannot be overstated.
Community Needs Addressed
Child and adolescent health is paramount to successful communities. We believe that health of our youth depends on school environment and subject matter. By holding Healthy Heroes in a community, we aim to raise awareness of the importance of teaching youth skills to stay healthy, while simultaneously inspiring their teachers with expert-led workshops. Finally, we hope that the student’s parents will also be reached, through the goody-bags that are handed out, which include brochures and recipe books. Through this event, the healthcare student volunteers are also benefiting - as they receive valuable time with children, and can sit-in on the expert-led workshops which can provide them with tips they may not learn throughout their training.
Timeline & Scheduling
The event takes approximately three months of planning.
The primary motivation behind this event stems from our belief that Ireland’s obesity epidemic will not cure itself. Ireland is set to be the most obese nation in Europe by 2030 (WHO, 2017). In the past two decades, the numbers of overweight and obese persons in Ireland have doubled (Morgan et al, 2008). Only 40% of us now have a healthy weight (DoH, 2016). The Overweight Ireland 2009 report shows that at age 13, 13% boys and 9% girls are overweight. Medical students should take initiative to raise awareness on this issue. Promoting healthy eating at a young age can help to prevent diseases later in life, such as type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis or hypertension. In a digital age where many claim to be a healthy lifestyle expert, Healthy Heroes offers students understandable, factual information on how to best look after their own health. Through effective take home skills taught by experts this event helps to instil healthy habits in students, especially from a young age. Healthy Heroes is a fun and interactive form of preventative medicine and is really essential in all ages. This is why we’ve designed a teen specific day, to revive their core knowledge of mental, physical and nutritional health and moreover, add to it! Likewise with alcohol and tobacco abuse becoming widespread among Irish young people, with 16% to 29.9% of teens as young as 13 having already started smoking, the importance of constant education in these matters cannot be overstated.
Community Needs Addressed
Child and adolescent health is paramount to successful communities. We believe that health of our youth depends on school environment and subject matter. By holding Healthy Heroes in a community, we aim to raise awareness of the importance of teaching youth skills to stay healthy, while simultaneously inspiring their teachers with expert-led workshops. Finally, we hope that the student’s parents will also be reached, through the goody-bags that are handed out, which include brochures and recipe books. Through this event, the healthcare student volunteers are also benefiting - as they receive valuable time with children, and can sit-in on the expert-led workshops which can provide them with tips they may not learn throughout their training.
Timeline & Scheduling
The event takes approximately three months of planning.
- Three months prior (or earlier):
- Book venue
- Send out generic invitation to target schools
- Contact potential sponsors for catering, prizes, gifts
- Weekly committee meetings to plan the workshops
- Reach out to potential workshop facilitators (health experts)
- Two months prior:
- Begin recruiting volunteer healthcare students
- Book catering for volunteer/teacher lunches
- One month prior:
- Recruit min. 50 healthcare student volunteers
- Order booklets, brochures, recipes etc.
- One week prior:
- Host a volunteer training night
- Pack goody bags for the students
- Create a logical volunteer rota
- Remind school teachers of the event, where to park etc.
- One day prior:
- Decorate the venue with banners, balloons, table cloths, signage
Promotional Strategies
We use the NUI Galway Press Office as our point of dissemination, as well as social media. We draft a press release which we send to the press office. They put it on the university’s website as well as sending it to local and national media. We have been interviewed on multiple radio stations, and in local newspapers. We use the AMSI national and both AMSI-NUIG’s and Paediatric Society’s local social media pages to recruit volunteers. We contact all schools through email, however if our budget was larger, we would prefer to post them hard copies of information invitation packages.
Implementation Checklist
We use the NUI Galway Press Office as our point of dissemination, as well as social media. We draft a press release which we send to the press office. They put it on the university’s website as well as sending it to local and national media. We have been interviewed on multiple radio stations, and in local newspapers. We use the AMSI national and both AMSI-NUIG’s and Paediatric Society’s local social media pages to recruit volunteers. We contact all schools through email, however if our budget was larger, we would prefer to post them hard copies of information invitation packages.
Implementation Checklist
- Large rota of volunteers
- Enough food & drink to serve the volunteers and teachers
- Plentiful decorations for the venue
- Professional photographer/videographer
- Press release pre-event
- Post-event survey for teachers and volunteers
- Press release post-event
Sponsors of the event: SuperSubs, French Vanoli School of Fitness, Crossfit Galway, Fyffes, Glenisk, Cell Explorers, Soar, Youth Work Galway, CURAM SFI research centre for medical devices, Croi, Dunnes Stores, Dr Madeleine O'Reilly’s dental surgery, Spun Out, the National Dairy Council, and of course NUI Galway.
Any queries can be made to Rosie James at amsi@socs.nuigalway.ie.