An innovative example for raising health awareness among students at the András Pető Faculty of Semmelweis University

Abstract

Introduction: Unhealthy lifestyle greatly contributes to the unfavourable health status of the Hungarian population. Strengthening the health awareness of the population, the increase of those living a healthy lifestyle could substantially improve the health of the population. Hungary has introduced numerous measures to this end, like the public health product tax in 2011 to reduce the consumption of unhealthy food products and to promote a healthy diet. From 2012/2013 onwards daily physical education was introduced in Hungarian public education. From 2011 higher education institutions also have to provide for health promotion in accordance with their curriculum.
Methods: Based on my original idea, SEPAK (Semmelweis University Pető András Faculty) organised „The healthiest class of the year” contest in the 2017/2018 academic year. This is a unique initiative for students in higher education to learn about health-conscious attitudes and to share their health-related experiences with each other. We used a questionnaire to assess the knowledge of the students about their health, habits, needs, health status, nutrition and resting habits, any locomotory complains, anthropometric data and motor skills. We analysed the data using the SPSS statistics application.
Results: Weused subjective and objective data to organize health related awareness raising presentations and ran a contest among the different classes studying at the faculty in which every participant shared their daily health-related activities on social media. Each of these social media posts is given points that were collected until the end of the year. Inspired by the program more than 30% of the students began some sort of regular physical activity by the end of the year. In the course of the second year we organized three major lecturers and 77% of all students had participated by the end of the school year. Based on a survey conducted at the end, 20% of participants responded that they had changed their lifestyle and were living a healthier life.
Conclusion: The initiative inspired students to join the program, health-conscious life became a daily routine, participants began to organize programs with each other. The social media posts helped them learn from each other’s ideas, advice and experiences. They cheered each other on, many started to live more consciously and began to understand that it was worth doing for their health.