Physical Education in Maricopa

Community Health Education Project The Healthy People 2020 topic selected for this community health education project is Physical Education.

According to the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (2018), the goal of Physical Education for Healthy People 2020 is to “improve health, fitness, and quality of life through daily physical activity.” The windshield survey of the population in Maricopa County in Phoenix, Arizona, reveals that very few people in the community are outdoors exercising—few people are seen talking walks, riding bikes, playing sports on playgrounds or on courts, and many people are seen who appear to suffer from obesity.

This indicates that there is a need to educate the community on the importance of physical activity. The objective this project aims to achieve is: “PA-1—Reduce the proportion of adults who engage in no leisure-time physical activity” (Healthy People 2020, 2018). This issue is a priority for the community of Maricopa County because a significant portion of the population suffers from obesity, which is partly caused by a lack of exercise (Ratcliffe & Ellison, 2015).

Unless the adult population of Maricopa County is provided with physical education, their health is going to deteriorate. I know this from personal experience and can attest to the need of adults in this community for physical activity: I have struggled with weight since 2009, when I gained 50 lbs following my pregnancy. The weight caused me bilateral knee pain and doctors were no help. Finally, I started exercising on my own, lost 10 lbs. and the knee pain went away.

I know there are others in the same boat, because I have talked to them personally. I would like to share my experience with them and promote physical activity as a means of increasing health in the adult community. The intervention I recommend is to promote physical activity through a public advertising campaign that increases the awareness of the adult community about the positive benefits of physical activity on health.

The intended outcome of the intervention is that people will begin to lose weight in the community, just as I did, by following a prescription or regimen of physical exercise that is easy to do and enjoyable. Supporting research for this intervention includes the study by Higgins and Higgins (2016) who have recommended prescribing exercise to help patients lose weight, and the study by Swift, Johannsen, Lavie, Earnest and Church (2014) who have shown that a steady regimen of physical activity can lead to weight loss and effective health maintenance.

The intervention accommodates strengths of the community because there are many venues where adults can go for physical activity: there are numerous parks with walking trails, lots of bike paths for people who want to ride bikes, several courts for adults who want to play tennis or volleyball or basketball; gyms, swimming pools and many other options.

This intervention also accommodates the limitation of the community, which is that it is unlikely to hear this education from doctors locally—so the public campaign helps to overcome that obstacle by taking the message directly to the people. The intervention may be evaluated for effectiveness by conducting a survey poll of residents of the community both pre- and post-intervention to obtain data regarding the community’s weight both before and after the public education intervention took place. If the average weight does not decline.