Promoting healthy living essay
In this project, you will
create materials to promote healthy living
describe steps necessary to improve an aspect of health
A local council on health has asked you to promote an aspect of health that you think is important to your community. You will choose which aspect of health to promote and you will define the community that you are targeting.
To achieve your goal, you will create three types of promotional materials—a brochure, a poster, and a bumper sticker—all of which the council will distribute in your community to encourage community members to implement your suggestions. Together, the three pieces of promotional materials will demonstrate why the aspect of health you chose is important for your community and will describe the steps that community members should take to foster this aspect of health in their lives.
Your teacher will use this rubric to evaluate the completeness of your work as well as the clarity of thinking you exhibit.
Criteria
Distinguished
(4 points)
The topic suited the scope of the promotional materials. The community was appropriate for the health topic.
The materials presented all aspects of the chosen health topic accurately and demonstrated well-researched information.
Together, the three forms of promotional materials covered the health topic thoroughly.
The promotional materials were appropriately formatted and pleasing to the eye.
Proficient
(3 points)
The topic was fairly well chosen for the scope of the project but a little too broad or too narrow. The community was fairly appropriate for the health topic.
The materials presented most aspects of the chosen health topic accurately and demonstrated adequately researched information.
Together, the three forms of promotional materials covered the health topic adequately.
The promotional materials were adequately formatted and designed.
Developing
(2 points)
The topic was decidedly too broad or too narrow for the scope of the project. The community did not match the health topic.
The materials presented several aspects of the chosen health topic inaccurately and did not demonstrate well-researched information.
The three forms of promotional materials covered the health topic only partially.
In one or two of the promotional materials, the formatting and organization did not convey the content well.
Beginning
(1 point)
The topic choice lacked focus and did not fit the scope of the project. The community was inappropriate for the health topic.
The materials presented most aspects of the chosen health topic inaccurately and did not demonstrate well-researched information.
The three forms of promotional materials covered the health topic very sketchily.
The brochure and the poster lacked organization and formatting; they did not convey the content well.
The Task
Choose an aspect of health you are interested in promoting and find a good focus for your project—that is, a focus that is not too narrow and not too broad. In addition to choosing a focus, you will need to define the community that will be the audience for your presentation materials.
You will create a bumper sticker, a poster, and a brochure that will promote your health topic in diverse ways. The bumper sticker will capture the gist of your topic in a few words and may include a graphic representation. The poster will give more details and can be divided into sections to help the viewer find the information easily. It will probably also combine words and images and should allow viewers to quickly grasp the essence of how and why to incorporate this information into their lives. The brochure can include even more detail. You should format and organize it so that it will fold into a size and shape that is easy to hold so the reader could take one and use the information about the health topic later. The brochure should also be engaging to the reader by incorporating graphic elements.
Before beginning work on your materials, determine which area of health you plan to promote and what community you will target for your promotion. Think back over the health topics you have studied and think of three that seem the most relevant to you.
Then decide which community you want to target in your promotional materials. For example, do you want to motivate your five-block neighborhood to improve its recycling program, or do you want to improve the nutritional quality of your school lunches? If so, then the neighborhood or the school would be your community.
Write the three topics and your community choice below.
1.fitness
2. nutrition
3. mental health
Community: I want to increase the nutritional quality of meals served to homeless people in shelters so that they have whatever they require to be healthy. I may also target the obese population and advocate healthy eating habits to them. For fitness, I’d like to promote a gym or do something for a senior living community to encourage people to continue to exercise if they are able so that they can live longer. In addition, I may promote talking to a counselor or seeking treatment in my city or at schools for mental health.
Now focus your topic so it will have the right scope for this project.
Let’s say that you decided nutrition was an important topic to you. What aspect of nutrition would you promote through your project? Would you want to focus on the dietary challenges that certain kinds of athletes face and on how they should adjust their diets with their activity levels? Or perhaps you want to focus on how someone with an eating disorder or someone who has early-onset obesity should address nutrition. If so, you could research the most helpful treatments for someone with one of those conditions. Your brochure and poster could outline some risk factors, ways to prevent the condition, ways to treat it if it does develop, and places someone can go to get help with that condition.
These are examples of well-focused topics. You would not want to tackle nutrition in overly broad terms, such as Why is nutrition important? or What constitutes good nutrition? Nor should you be too specific, as in How much vitamin C does a person need?
Choose one of your three topics from above and describe it so that the focus is not too broad or too narrow. Include the community you want to target, which might have changed as you refined your topic’s focus.
Focused topic: Focused topic: Nutrition, and targeting obesity
Community: Community: The community I want to focus on is the obese population and advocate healthy eating habits to them.
Step 1
Research the topic you have chosen, gathering all the important information that you will need to create your promotional materials. Sort the information you’ve gathered into piles for each material you will create: What information needs to go in the brochure? What should go on the poster? And what will the bumper sticker convey about the topic?
Step 2
Choose a poster and a brochure format. Note that brochures can be folded different ways. Choose the template that works best for your brochure and what you want it to look like. Keep in mind that brochures are usually printed on two pages—a front and a back. For your poster, choose a template that most resembles the layout you want to use.
Use these web links to download your choice of brochure and poster template. Be sure to choose one that lists a software version that you have on your computer.
Decide what graphics you want to include in your promotional materials, as well as how you are going to obtain them. Don’t use copyrighted images. You can find clip art or you can use a graphics program to make your own images. Or perhaps you want to make a table and format it with colors to spruce up your materials.
Step 3
Organize your words and graphics on your poster and in your brochure so that both items best convey your health topic and make your community members want to read and learn from them. Write your bumper sticker and arrange the words with graphics, if desired, using a word-processing or other program available to you.
Submit your finished brochure, a poster, and a bumper sticker through the Drop Box.
