OCC3051 · Evidence-based health promotion practice in occupational therapy

Overview

This unit examines the key theory, frameworks and practical approaches used in contemporary health promotion and occupational therapy practice to address health inequalities, prevent illness and injury, and promote health and wellbeing. You will examine a range of health promotion strategies, their strengths, limitations, and application in clinical care and community settings for occupational therapy. Through a focus on empowerment, participation and capacity-building, you will develop skills for working with individuals and community networks to facilitate health promotion action. You will be introduced to qualitative and quantitative methodologies by conducting and evaluating survey questionnaire-based research and semi-structured interviews. You will develop the skills necessary to critique and evaluate research evidence to inform the design, development, and implementation of evidence-based health promotion programs for occupational therapy practice. You will also be introduced to methods of presenting empirical evidence, generating research questions, selecting, and implementing appropriate qualitative and quantitative survey designs, completing data collection, analysis, interpretation, and reporting of results. Specifically, you will learn the fundamentals of conducting quantitative and qualitative survey research. This will provide you with the foundational skills to integrate clinically relevant evidence into health promotion implementation in occupational therapy practice.

Offerings

Assessment

The Handbook lists an examination for this unit.

Assessment details may change. Please refer to the assessment information in Moodle closer to the start of the teaching period.

Requisites

Learning outcomes

1. Describe the values, principles and charters that guide health promotion practice, and discuss examples of their application in Australian and international occupational therapy settings.
2. Locate and synthesise relevant evidence using a variety of formal and informal methods to formulate a population health research question.
3. Select, appraise, design, and analyse a survey to gather relevant qualitative and quantitative data about a health promotion topic within a selected population.
4. Analyse and evaluate a range of health promotion strategies using qualitative and quantitative survey methodology approaches.
5. Critically analyse the challenges and opportunities for integrating health promotion into contemporary practice in occupational therapy.
6. Apply community engagement, capacity-building and participatory approaches to community profiling, planning and evaluation to improve the quality and sustainability of health promotion within a selected population.
7. Apply knowledge of various research methods to develop and inform an integrated, multi-strategy health promotion program focused on a selected health issue and population group.
8. Analyse and discuss knowledge of ethical issues related to conducting occupational therapy research within culturally diverse populations.

Workload

4 hours of tutorials per week x 12 weeks: 4 hours of self-directed online structured learning activities per week (to be completed on students' own time) x 12 weeks 8 hours of self directed learning per week x 12 weeks

Student experience, not official rules. Nothing here changes what the Handbook says.