Community Heath, Health Promotion Planning, Implementation and Evaluation

Introduction

Bruns et al. (2016) researched at the main University of a large metropolitan campus in Perth, Western Australia and in New Zealand on how intervention can be done on young university students at risk of alcohol abuse due to their social surrounding. This paper focuses on reviewing this article to address community health, health promotion planning, and intervention on alcohol abuse among young campus learners. This study aims at providing the intervention strategies to reduce alcohol-related effects. The research discovers that unlike low drinking students, hazardous drinking learners expect to benefit from alcohol hence took alcohol more often thus degrading their academic performance. The study further reveals that scholars at the age bracket of 21 – 24 years were rarely classified into hazardous drinkers instead, they fell in the low drinker class. The study also reveals that campus students who live with their parents are less likely to abuse alcohol. The measures that the researchers tried to implement to reduce the habit of drinking had minimal impacts. However, the study identifies the importance of policies that can be implemented not only by the universities but also organizations around the campus community for health promotion purposes. For instance, in the university, they can reinforce a rule of banning heaving drinking within the campus premise to promote responsible alcohol consumption. The community can assist by reducing social functions that support free and low-cost alcohol to minimize the rate of alcohol intake. In other words, universal plans and promotion are deemed to have more positive results compared to strategies emphasized at an individual level.

Summary

This research article focuses on campus-based intercession; it compares hazardous and low-risk drinking pervasiveness as well as harms that they are exposed to plus the influence of the intervention after year one. It enlightens readers that most university students engage in low to high consumption of alcohol due to change from high school to college environment. As a result, they put their health at risk. The study further supports its claim by the Youth Alcohol Project (YAP) that was reinforced using the Social Cognitive Theory (SCT). The theory was applied to determine the relationship amid the learners’ traits such as their genetic factors, gender and personality, their behaviors, and their environment. According to the findings of the research on university students in New Zealand, the university students are high alcohol consumers compared to their non-college peers. In other words, this article suggests that the campus environment influences the rate of alcohol intake among students due to their exposure to new experiences that they find exciting such as social functions relating alcohol. However, scholars living with their parents are low takers compared the learners that live within the university premises. The age group at risk is of those learners between 18-24 years compared to the senior adults because they abuse alcohol at the slightest chance they get. In addition, the article also claims that young campus scholars have a social-cultural norm that social events are meant for getting drunk, an influence that they obtain from their culture, peers, and family. Furthermore, based on the SCT, learning is also attained through observation hence this age bracket may acquire drinking behavior from their siblings, family members, and peers. As a result, these researchers saw a need for health intervention as well as implementing effective strategies to minimize alcohol consumption levels including their harms. While some authors may find it appropriate to apply single strategy to curb this situation, this study claims universal approach as the optimal measure because it not only focuses on the affected segment but also their surroundings to ensure effective intervention and health promotion at all levels. In other words, single strategies only accomplish short-term goals.

Critique

The study claims that observation through learning by social cognitive theory is valid. According to SCT, knowledge can also be acquired through observation (Jonassen & Land, 2012). Moreover, this type of learning is considered highly effective because after an individual observes a behavior, he or she will act knowingly or unknowingly in the same manner. This claim implies that the article is right to state that family members, peers, and social-cultural norms influence young university students to high-risk alcohol consumption. In addition, learning also takes place based on a given environment. For instance, when a person goes to a dancing class, the individual will first watch, and since the room is filled with music, the person will be motivated to dance. In other words, after young learners graduate from high school to college, when they find an environment with friendly policies; less strict, they will turn to hazardous drinkers. It is also apparent that gender influences the rate of alcohol abuse among the young scholar (Larimer, 2013). For instance, unlike female campus students, most male learners at the university level are the one who indulge in hazardous drinking.

The use of universal strategies to control the rate of alcohol intakes such as reinforcing responsible alcohol service regulations in campus venue such as taverns, cafes and sports clubs is also a great policy (Wolfson et al., 2012). When the beverage service places around the university implement a strict system on the amount of alcohol it sells to college students, they help such projects in promoting responsible alcohol intake thus fostering health promotion. Hence, this useful measure of minimizing physical, as well as health problems, can be applied in all states’ universities despite the cultural background. The use of the cross-sectional approach for conducting the study was also a plus to the article because it facilitated the quick collection of data despite the large target populace of students.

The study’s cross-sectional approach is a significant weakness because it does not render a definite conclusion (Sedgwick, 2014). Therefore, in cases where the researchers were unable to determine the precise effect or prevalence, an assumption was made (Barnett et al., 2012). The more variables involved in research, the more twisted the relationship between the original variables. For instance, social-cultural norm indirectly influences hazardous drinking, but since it is a factor to be considered, it has to be analyzed, but the outcomes are not embedded in its effect. In other words, this type of research method involves many random variables that do not add value to the study in the end but give readers an understanding or highlight of how they affect the target population in the study.

Conclusion

The current study is useful in health evaluation, planning, and promotion through community intervention since they have proved to be effective. Nonetheless, further research should be implemented to analyze the effectiveness of the universal measures whether they are long-term as proposed by the study or short-term. Despite the challenges brought along by the study approach, one can conclude that the investigation is on point because it is backed up by supportive claims from other research. Hence, it can be used to resolve community health through evaluation, planning, and promotion of effective strategies.