Career Pathway: Health Promotion Event and Professional Collaboration

This essay details a health promotion event focused on addressing obesity among adolescents in Australia. The author, acting as a recreation therapist, describes the event's rationale, which aimed to educate the community about obesity's causes, consequences, and management. The essay outl...Read More

Running head: CAREER PATHWAY 1
Career pathway
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CAREER PATHWAY 2
Description of the event and my role
With increasing rates of obesity among youths or adolescents in Australia, we set up a
health promotion event at a community church on one particular weekend. The rationale of the
event was to educate or create awareness about the causes, consequences and management of
obesity. This event attracted four professions including health promotion officer, public health
officer, health service manager and the recreation therapist. My role in this case was to act as a
recreation therapist. I was the one to formulate recreation services like games to enhance
physical and mental well-being of the participants.
Description of four professions
Working with families, carers, clients and patients is sometimes a big challenge that
needs critical thinking and collaboration among different professions. In this unit, I have learnt
that some of the four professions that can collaborate to provide quality health services include
recreation therapist, public health officer, Health service manager and finally the Health
Promotion officer (King, Nancarrow, Borthwick, & Grace, 201). I have learnt that each of the
four profession has unique roles though with a common objective of improved healthcare to
clients or communities. First of all, public health deals with safety and health of the public. The
public health officer is therefore supposed to interact with people to identify any problems and
come up with necessary solutions for the same (Sklar, 2015). Another profession that I learnt is
health service management. This involves planning and coordination of activities and other team
members towards a common objective. The recreation therapist on the other hand use recreation
activities like games in order to engage communities for better physical and mental health
(Malatzky & Bourke, 2017). Finally, the health promotion officer is all about assisting
communities to have full control of their health.

CAREER PATHWAY 3
Reflection of the roles played by the professions
During the health promotion event, each profession played different roles though the
roles were overlapping at some point. The public Health officer was the one who developed and
implemented interventions to reduce the risk of obesity. He was also responsible of identify the
population or the children that were at risk of obesity by estimating their Body Mass Index.
Furthermore, the Public health officer was also responsible of evaluating the effectiveness of the
prescribed interventions. He was using the impact evaluation method to achieve that. The public
health officer was also delivering the presentations to the risk groups. He was also supervising
and coordinating the other professions during the entire event. Finally, he prepared the report
summarizing all the activities conducted in the event.
The Health Service Manager played different roles in the entire event. First of all, she
was the one who was supervising, training and then recruiting suitable candidates for the event.
She was also the one who was following up and maintaining records on the budget of the event.
She was also responsible of running day to day records of the number of clients served. She was
also responsible of creating work schedules for other professions. Finally, she was coordinating
everything among the team members.
The Recreational Therapist was coming up with certain games for the participants to take
part in order to improve their physical and mental health. The health promotion officer was
working alongside different populations to identify health issues and their potential solutions. He
was also developing programs to improve health. He was also the one responsible of establishing
networks within the communities.

CAREER PATHWAY 4
Discrepancies and new things learnt
The opportunity to engage in the health promotion event has really taught me a lot of new
concepts. Initially, I thought that is only the physiotherapist who can improve the health of
clients through physical activities (Ellner et al., 2015). In this context however, I have learnt that
the recreation therapist can also do that. The only discrepancy is that the physiotherapist handles
patients or clients who are physical impaired due to one or more reason like accident while the
recreation therapist works with those who are not necessarily physically impaired. There is also
an overlap of roles between four professions (De Lyon, Neville, & Armour, 2016). The Health
service Manager for example manages the day to day activities at the event which should also be
done by the public health officer. Whatever this implies is that health promotion is a complex
activities. A public Health officer nor a health promotion officer cannot fulfill all the duties. It is
therefore imperative that the different professions collaborate to improve the health of
communities.
Reflection on main things learnt about career pathway
My dream profession is to become a public health officer. This unit has really opened up
new skills and roles that I am supposed to master in order to become a good Public Health
Officer. The event has also made me understand that the role is not as easy as it appears on
paper. I am supposed to have good communication skills to engage with communities to identify
health issues affecting them and then use critical skills to develop effective intervention
programs. I therefore feel ready to pursue my career pathway of public Health.

CAREER PATHWAY 5
Final conclusion
In conclusion, the entire semester or unit has been quite essential. It has equipped with
necessary knowledge about the different professions and their roles. Previously, I thought it is
only the public health officer who is entitled to identify health issues within communities and
come up with necessary interventions. This is not the case. I have learnt that he/she has to liaise
with recreational therapists, health service managers and health promotion officers. I look
forward to put this knowledge into practice.

CAREER PATHWAY 6
References
De Lyon, A. T., Neville, R. D., & Armour, K. M. (2016). The Role of Fitness Professionals
in Public Health: A Review of the Literature. Quest, 69(3), 313-330.
doi:10.1080/00336297.2016.1224193
Ellner, A. L., Stout, S., Sullivan, E. E., Griffiths, E. P., Mountjoy, A., & Phillips, R. S.
(2015). Health Systems Innovation at Academic Health Centers. Academic Medicine,
90(7), 872-880. doi:10.1097/acm.0000000000000679
King, O., Nancarrow, S. A., Borthwick, A. M., & Grace, S. (2015). Contested professional
role boundaries in health care: a systematic review of the literature. Journal of Foot
and Ankle Research, 8(1). doi:10.1186/s13047-015-0061-1
Malatzky, C., & Bourke, L. (2017). When the social meets health in rural Australia:
confronting the disconnect. Health Sociology Review, 26(2), 190-203.
doi:10.1080/14461242.2016.1275978
Sklar, D. P. (2015). New Conversations About Health Reform and Academic Health Centers.
Academic Medicine, 90(1), 1-2. doi:10.1097/acm.0000000000000574

CAREER PATHWAY 7