Peter Balvanz is a graduate student in the Department of Health Behaviors and Health Education at the School of Public Health
Since September of last year a small group of students from the UNC School of Public Health’s Department of Health Behaviors and Health Education have been conducting a healthy community assessment in Caswell County to understand the barriers to health and inherent community strengths that promote health. Assessment activities have included interviews with residents, public officials, and social service workers, as well as participant observation, field notes, and a review of secondary data sources. Among the various community concerns, residents in Caswell County most often highlighted growing problems with kidneys, diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease as well as a lack of opportunities for youth to engage in physical activity.
Given Caswell residents’ primary concerns, these UNC students (Peter Balvanz, Leilani Ogan, and Jeff Quinn) are taking preliminary steps to engage small groups of adolescents in a photo-based project to understand factors that promote or impede a healthy lifestyle for Caswell County youth. This project is designed to ask adolescent participants to take photos that relate to factors that promote or impede a healthy lifestyle, and then, with the help of the UNC students, will use these images to trigger a deeper group discussion. The goal for the project is to develop a partnership with the youth to then strategize about how to promote healthy lifestyles and how to address barriers.