Teaching recreational staff about heatstroke and heat-related illness prevention

¶ … Teaching Plan: Reflection and Evaluation

Summary of teaching plan

The topic of the presentation and instruction is heatstroke and other heat related causes of death. The teaching presentation was provided to staff at a Parks and Recreation department in the community, and plans are being made to conduct the teaching presentation at church communities in preparation for their vacation Bible school activities, at adult / child care centers that often plan outings for their program participants, and at health centers at Universities who are in a position to encounter university students who are suffering from a heat-related threats to their health.

The heat wave that occurred in western Europe in the summer of 2003 is a case study in the relation of social structure and cultural practices and the impact of a natural disaster on public health (Kopp, et al., 2015). Heat waves are more lethal to the poor who do not have air conditioning and the elderly who live alone and don't have much contact with others on a daily basis: these situations are characteristic of French family structure and culture (Kopp, et al., 2015). Elders were left in the cities without air-conditioning while their families and physicians vacationed on the coasts (Kopp, et al., 2015). This information about the somewhat unique public health policy and practice issues of the heat wave in France in 2003 ties to Alma Ata's Health for All Global Initiative to consider health "as a socio-economic issue and as a human right," and calls for "economic and social development as a pre-requisite to the attainment of health for all."

The teaching plan focused on three primary areas: 1) The astonishing numbers of people who perished during the heat wave and the socio-politico-economic reasons for the exacerbation of the heat waves; 2) the concept of wet-bulb temperature that is a product of air temperature, relative humidity, and surface pressure; and 3) the symptoms and treatment of heat stroke and other heat-related conditions that can worsen until they culminate in heat stroke, and potentially, death.

In addition, the topic and teaching plan integrates well with the Healthy People 2020 goal for this community teaching initiative is as follows: Improve the Nation's ability to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from a major health incident. The objectives for this goal that are relevant to the proposed community teaching initiative are as follows: 1) Foster informed, empowered individuals and communities; 2) ensure situational awareness; 3) ensure timely and effective communications; 4) ensure prevention or mitigation of environmental and other emerging threats to health; 5) ensure that all systems that support national health security are based on the best available science, evaluation, and quality improvement.

The theory of learning to be utilized is constructivism, which holds that learning is an active and constructive process in which individuals construct or create their own subjective representation of some objective reality (Atherton, 2013). Prior and new information are integrated through activity, dialogical process, and experience (Atherton, 2013). The creative group activities that are used during the teaching presentation provide opportunity for the integration of active, cognitive, and relational features (Atherton, 2013). The participants will learn new facts about heat waves and apply it to their work in Parks and Recreation in order to ensure that people engage in physical activities safely, that they understand the danger of overheating during hot and human conditions, and with a healthy regard to the weather.

The primary learning objectives for the teaching presentation are as follows: 1) Parks & Recreation staff will be able to explain the dynamics of wet-bulb temperature by he end of the presentation; 2) Parks & Recreation staff will be able to list recent heat waves and the approximate number of people who died from heat-related causes during the heat waves by the end of the presentation; and 3) Parks & Recreation staff will be able to explain physiological response to wet-bulb temperatures, describe the symptoms and causes of heat stroke, and list the precautions that need to be put in place -- all by the end of the presentation. The instructional content presented for each of the main topics listed here: 1) The interactions of the variables of the wet-bulb metric, and when the metric signals a threat to health; 2) the impact of a warming climate on the frequency and severity of heat waves and associated severe weather patterns, such as droughts, floods, & storms; 3) the socioeconomic conditions that exacerbate the threat of heat waves to public health; 4) he cultural factors that contribute to vulnerability of members of a society; and 5) practice predicting the wet-bulb temperatures of individuals in different situations.

Evaluation of teaching experience

Participants took pre- and post-quizzes to assess their basic knowledge regarding heat stroke, the wet-bulb temperature dynamic, and the socio-economic and cultural influences that exacerbate a heat wave situation for vulnerable people. Where the questions on the quizzes were open-ended, formative assessment of participants' recall and grasp of the teaching presentation content was based on a rubric that provided several stepped responses toward a complete correct answer.

Community response to teaching

The community response was strongly positive to the teaching presentation that was provided to Parks and Recreation staff. Some of the more creative features of the presentation that appeared to influence this positive response are discussed in this paragraph. The interactive maps and infographics make use of creative illustrations. The profile game of heat wave health outcomes are an imaginative game that brings home the influence of poverty, or being place-bound in an urban or rural area. The overall instructional approach was to provide both emotionally gripping information and the inarguable facts related to the threat of heat waves to large numbers of vulnerable people, and to impart the rising trajectory of heat wave exigencies due to global warming. The game of "Jeopardy" serves as a formative assessment for learning taking place during the presentation. Were the results of the pre- and post-quizzes at acceptable levels? Did training participants respond in ways that indicated they understood the content and were synthesizing the several components of the training.

Areas of strengths and areas of improvement

One of the strengths of the teaching experience was the readiness to learn by the Parks and Recreation Department. One of the key motivators for this target aggregate is the presence of venues for recreation that are under the aegis of the department, including several municipal golf courses, tennis courts, and track and field spaces for baseball, soccer, etc. The erratic weather throughout the U.S. during the last 12 months (spring 2014 through spring 2015) has highlighted the far-reaching effects of climate change and the associated threats to public health.