Laying a Foundation in Health & Wellness

Points To Consider:

• Health beliefs vary between and within groups. Different people from the same culture may have beliefs influenced by education, personal experience, acculturation, and other factors. That’s why it is important not to make assumptions, such as, “all Asians are uncomfortable with eye contact,” or “all African-Americans encourage early toilet training.”
  
  
• The “correct” way to approach some health issues changes over time. Our parents were told to lay babies on their stomachs to sleep; now experts tell parents to put their babies to bed lying on their backs or sides.
  
  

Activity 4: Mother Wit & Medical Wit:
Listening for Common Ground

Purpose: We all want the best possible health for the children in our care—our own children and our students. Sometimes different ways to achieve that goal are in conflict. This exercise offers an opportunity to practice respectful listening to people with different health beliefs. It also helps staff identify strategies to handle situations in which the health of children may be endangered.

For this activity you will need:

• Handout B: Explore Difference! Question Cards (optional)
  
  
• Flip chart and markers
  
  
• Writing materials for participants

Step 1: Ask the group to think of areas of health in which cultural beliefs and practices differ. Use Handout B: Explore Difference! Question Cards from Activity 3 for suggestions, or participants may think of their own examples. Think about differences in beliefs concerning:

• causes of illness
  
  
• ways to maintain health and prevent illness
  
  
• sources of health information and treatment methods
  
  
• immunizations
  
  
• the use of traditional healers
  
  
• nutrition

Step 2: Form groups of three and ask each member to play a role. One person will be a parent; one will be a Head Start teacher, family service worker, health aide—any role that has direct contact with parents; the third will be a “coach.” Ask them to choose a health situation to discuss.

Step 3: Ask the group to spend 10 minutes or so role playing a discussion of the chosen health area. The worker is concerned about the family’s health in that area, and the parent is explaining how family members are handling the problem in the context of their own health beliefs and practices, which differ from the worker’s. The coach’s job is to observe and note interactions that are respectful of differences and those that might make the parent feel bad.

Step 4: Call an end to the role play and ask the coach to share his or her observations for discussion in the small group. The coach must be prepared to note examples of positive communication as well as areas that need improvement and be careful to offer feedback in a respectful and gentle manner.

Step 5: Give the group members an opportunity to switch roles and take another turn.

Step 6: Return to the large group and ask each small group to share a technique that the members used to help them listen respectfully to the differences. List these techniques on flip chart paper. Also list communication practices that “shut down” the speaker and made him or her less willing to share openly.

Step 7: Discuss how to handle health concerns about a health practice that may be harmful. Encourage the group to think about the following questions:

(a) What does it feel like to believe in an unconventional or uncommon health practice?

(b) Have you ever been in a situation in which you felt that an unfamiliar health practice was harmful? What made you think that it was harmful? Some practices, for example coining (rubbing the child’s skin with a coin in such a way that it raises a bruise—believed to purify the blood), look alarming but are not harmful. Are there ways to check out these assumptions?

(c) If the practice is safe, are there ways to include it along with the approach recommended by the program?

(d) Who can you ask about the practice or about the individual child’s health?

(e) If you believe the action is harmful, and discussion or counseling do not lead to a resolution, what are the next steps?

Points to Consider:

• Health practices that differ from those with which we are familiar and comfortable can be beneficial, neutral, or harmful. We must be careful about assuming into which category the practice falls.
  
  
• Often significantly different practices can be used in a complementary way, i.e., chicken soup and antibiotics or acupuncture to assist healing after surgery.
  

Next Steps: Ideas to Extend Practice

Multicultural Health Fair
Stage a multicultural health fair one day at your program. Invite parents to join in and ask them and staff to make brief presentations about interesting health practices from their cultures. Presentations could include storytelling, cooking demonstrations, sharing “mother wit.” Invite health practitioners from the community (curanderas, acupuncturists, homeopaths, herbalists, traditional healers, others) to come and explain their approach. Invite providers who do free health screenings for adults such as a mammogram van, blood pressure checks, and/or cholesterol ratings.

Go “Green”
Make your center ecology-smart. Build on the understanding that environmental health is a petal on the pinwheel. Recycle paper products, glass and cans. Buy bulk rather than prepackaged whenever possible. Explore children’s activities that promote resource conservation and respect for the environment. Determine whether environmentally friendly practices save money. Document your efforts. Keep track of any savings and income and use them to fund special projects.

Supporting the Wellness of Coworkers and Families
In the activities, “The Wellness Pinwheel” and “Wellness in My Life & in My Work,” staff members considered how they support the health of Head Start children. Re-do those activities with the following variations:

Variation A:      Substitute the word “coworker” for the word “child” in each of the instructions. How do we support the wellness of our coworkers?

Variation B:      Substitute “parent” or “caregiver” for the word “child” in the instructions. What do we do to support the five dimensions of health for parents/caregivers of children in our program?