Health Promotion 

We are the Health Promotion Masters class of 2016 at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, Howard College Campus.  As a diverse group, we have learned about each other’s backgrounds, personalities and strengths. Our stories helped break the ice between the students. In many ways, we are different and similar. We all come from different cultural, educational, economic, gender, racial, age and religious backgrounds. We have a handful of people that come from different countries around Africa, such as Burundi, Zimbabwe and Nigeria. As a group, we have broken these misconceptions and demographic barriers that historically colonised discourses such as the academic world, literature, the media, the news, the entertainment industry and human relations throughout the world. We have replaced these barriers with objectivity, subjectivity and effective change by removing harmful stereotypes and generalizations.

 

In addition to our dissertations, we have to further complete coursework modules on research methods, the personal is the professional, planning & evaluation and health promotion practice. We are also currently completing our community project titled “Cato Crest Ikhona Lamadoda”. Our project focuses on issues around domestic violence, reproductive health, substance use/abuse, family matters, safety and security and other health related issues among men residing within the Cato Crest area, Durban, South Africa. The aim of our community project was to create a dialogical space for our participants to explore the subjective factors that contribute towards the issues that they experience. In this way, participants went through a reflexive process to create their own meaning of their realities without us as researchers imposing on them of what we thought to be right and wrong in their lives. In doing so, our project aimed to understand the experiences of the men in a contextualized manner and explored possible solutions that would stimulate positive change and wellbeing within themselves, their families and their community.

 

One of our modules, The Personal is the Professional, inspired us to use the dialogical space as a method to conduct our intervention. This module further aims to develop reflexive professionals who can provide an appropriate service to individuals, communities and to society. Collectively, students construct and deconstruct social and educational worlds to contribute to a better, more nuanced understanding of learning, educational and societal processes. An evidence based personal, professional and academic portfolio is developed to be used throughout students' professional careers. The multidisciplinary nature of this module lends itself to embodiment of working within a team consisting of different sectors as part of the learning process.

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As a class, we have created a safe and confidential space for us to discuss issues that provoke critical thinking and application on various health topics. More importantly, we all have a thirst for knowledge, new experiences and different ways of thinking that contribute to our understandings of health in general. We all want to contribute something positive in people’s lives which we believe will largely determine the success of this year’s class in Masters Health Promotion. As much as we have individually already been through the process of self-discovery, we still believe that each of our journeys has just begun. As a whole, we have learned the connections and integration between the personal lives of professionals, globalization, research, health policies, equity planning, health issues, planning intervention skills and theory into applied practice. We look forward to gaining a deeper understanding, insight, knowledge and experience of these various linkages in our careers. Professionally, our aim is to increase the recognition of health promoters by the South African government and by the Department of Health as we do have a valuable position in South Africa in order to cope with various health issues existing in our country through promotive, rehabilitative, preventative, treatment and curative strategies. We further aim to address issues of inequality within different geographical spaces in South Africa related to the absence of or the lack of distribution of and accessibility to adequate health resources. In doing so, we aim to understand the implications of these socio-economic injustices around health and explore possible ways to deal with these issues on a personal and collective scale.

 

This website is designed to serve as a means of communication between the Masters class, other students, the community project participants, lecturers/coordinators, the local/global public and health organisations that desire to support or seek assistance in any of our areas of expertise and ventures.