RR7: Community Based Research

A community-based research project that I could imagine myself performing would involve going to low socio-economic neighborhoods and finding out their health statuses and the various factors that affect the community’s health. As a public health major, community health is very important to me. Another important factor in doing this research is that I did not have much growing up and I know how it is hard to be on a budget, and how difficult it is to have a balanced diet.
After compiling the data and finding out the eating habits of the community, I would like to employ the lessons I’ve learned in this class and engage with the community members. I would start an education program to help them find ways to stay healthy with their limited budgets within their community. This would give me an opportunity to employ the lessons I’ve learned in class. With the education program, I would show them resources that they can use and different ways to stay healthy.

I am not currently involved in a research project, but if I could choose a project to work on, I would be really interested in studying the role school cafeterias play in the health of the students; how it predicts their eating habits and the overall health of the student. School cafeteria foods are generally known to provide few options and have a bad taste, thus causing it to attract certain kinds of population: students who do not bring packed lunch and/or don’t have the money to purchase food from a la carte menu. However, it is not certain that these this population of students do actually purchase their meals at schools, therefore this project aims to study the health and eating habits of this population of students. I think this would be an interesting topic to research on because I remember when I was in school, I didn’t pack lunch, nor did I want to spend money on cookies and soda so I often times ate from the cafeteria, other times, I would skip lunch completely, reason being: they lacked of options and the quality and taste of the food was not great. This got me to thinking about the many other students who go through this as well, and how it will impact their health and eating habits in the long run, are they at risk for malnutrition, diabetes, obesity?. Students spend a great deal of time at school, 13-14 years, 5 days a week, 2 meals a day, if students are opting out of cafeteria food and going for the snack bar, this will not only affect their health, but their eating habits outside of school as well.

I am not currently involved in research, but I would be interested in doing research about motivation to do community service in students. I would like to figure out what motivates students to perform community service, and what can be done to make it a lifelong thing for them, and not just something they do to graduate or get class credit for. I believe that if all students were motivated internally to give back to their community or to help people out, the world would be a much better place. Additionally, I believe students are great enough in number and capable enough, that if everyone participated, students would be able to make a huge difference in their communities. I am interested in seeing if teaching these values at an early age would make more of an impact, or if teaching them in high schools would be more effective, because then the students would have matured more. I would like to see if there is a certain method, program or curriculum that could be developed that would help to instill these values in the students, and make them significant enough in that they would continue to carry out community service even as they grow older.

I am currently not doing any research. If I would create a community based research project I would make a center for children with Epilepsy. In this center I would survey parents. This would be in order to see whether they preferred placing their children into services such as Respid. Respid is a program that involved spedical-ed children into the community by teaching them how to behave. The second option would be to try and educate their children at home instead of having someone do it for them. The research would be to determine how much of government funds should apply to program outside of the home into the community for children with incapacities.

I have not started research since college started, but for a community-based research project, I can see myself working with underprivileged children in a small community. Since I am a Public Health Policy major, I can see myself working with the healthcare among those who cannot afford it, and provided a sustainable community to live in, such as providing good water, food, clothing, and social support for those children. I want to study those who came from unfortunate backgrounds, such as those who are in low economic statuses, abused families, and finding research on how to improve those communities. Since I do not have a specific location, I want to start in my community, and help those around me, and work outside of California, and hit the target areas outside of America. I want to show the children in those communities, that they have a chance at a good future if they work hard, stay in school, and be involved. Another important aspect of helping those underprivileged children is making sure that they have a good education. I want to research student communication towards others, and how they interact with each other so that learning can be simple for them. I think that doing this research will provide me the experience of working with a good group of people, and it is something that I want to do in the future to give back to the community.

To summarize, I am involved in research studying the effects therapy dogs have on ADHD adolescents. If I were to add a community based element to this research, I would like to implement the interventions being used in this study to local schools in the area, specifically targeting ADHD children in each of these schools. If the findings of my research turn out to be beneficial for ADHD children to use a token economy with therapy dogs, these techniques taught in each Cohort of the research would benefit schools to be prepared to deal with ADHD students. Since ADHD has been rapidly increasing over the past decades, many schools have been faced with the difficulty of trying to control the behavior of an increasing number of ADHD children. But with these techniques being used in my research study, local communities will be able to benefit from the research being done at UCI and, hopefully, expand to other communities once a system with these techniques has been developed.

The research is also teaching the parents of these ADHD children on behavioral techniques to deal with their hyperactive child so, perhaps, the schools could have sessions for the parents regarding techniques to control the child’s behavior as well. The one thing I have learned from working on this research is how little knowledge people have on these issues, so simply spreading the word through these sessions could improve local community families as well as others from word of mouth from parents to parents.

I am not currently involved in any research projects but if I could propose a project I would want to investigate the role of after school programs on children and their education. I would make it community based by observing students at local after school programs and see how they are using their time. Keeping children engaged is vital to their learning experiences. After school programs is where many children spend their time outside of school therefore it is important to know how these programs are run and if they are positive influences on children. An important idea to look at is the association between deviant behaviors and free time. If the children are busy with engaging activities and supervised during after school programs, will that decrease their involvement in deviant behaviors? This project would be particularly important in communities where crime and poverty is more relevant.

If I could involve myself with research and I was given the opportunity to add a community-based element I would like to first observe or survey different communities and any practices they follow to improve their future as a whole. Specifically whether they are aware of any sustainable practices and if they implement any in their routines. As a whole community or individually or per household. I would later review the outcomes, learn from them, and teach what I can. I would make suggestions, initiate projects, and hold education workshops. The findings would differ depending on the community I am examining, but I could potentially implement community gatherings that recycle together, craft together, create irrigation systems for gardens, possibly build a composting system, and many other projects. We could plant flowers and seasonal vegetables meanwhile teaching the importance of conservation and placing a high value on flora. We can even build a greenhouse for the community or for afterschool programs. I can hold scholarly and physical contests and award winners with bikes, canteens, gardening tools, and other gifts encouraging the community to live sustainable lifestyles. I would like to interview community representatives, families, and individuals to learn about how they live and what they consider conservation practices. I would also interview the same people after implementing my projects and workshops and see what they enjoyed and continued and what projects weren’t really favored by the community. Hopefully I could encourage communities to adjust their lifestyles to be more sustainable and spread their practices.

I would want to start doing research on the issue of autism. Since autism is a prevalent issue and there is minimal research done for medical relief, I want to propose a community based study to see how many residents have a child that shows symptoms of autism. After accumulating all that data, I would study the location and see how many facilities offer aid to the children such as therapy and if there are any places that offer educational classes for the parents. There are many parents I know that have children with autism and most cannot find resources. Some reasons are due to language barrier, income and cost, and some have a cultural stigma and refuse to believe that their child is ill or in other cases, some fathers refuse to care for their child. The most important part of my research is finding available resources for parents. Chances are, there is a high possibility that the autistic child is the first child and most new parents have not prepared themselves for these types of challenges ahead of them. Parents need to be informed of their rights and what they can do to protect their child as well as raising them will. Unlike most children, autistic children are more narrow-minded and have very particular tastes in foods, colors, textures, and are sometimes sensitive to sound depending on their severity. By proposing my issue, I can find ways to help parents care for their child before bad behaviors become habits and they are too old to learn social conduct.

First of all, I love food. But I also care about what food I eat, and the health benefits that come with it. Last year, I decided to give up lactose (I became lactose intolerant two years ago, but never made the connection!), which completely changed my opinion of food. For instance, when I see an advertisement on TV showing how cheesy and decadent some food is, I am disgusted. It has nothing to do with weight issues (I have never cared about my weight) – only how tired and drained I would feel after eating the carbohydrate-loaded food. It would bring me no energy, and no enjoyment after eating it.
A community-based research project related to this is surveying college students about their eating habits. I live in Arroyo Vista, where 20-30 students share a common living room and kitchen. I often see my housemates microwaving their leftovers, or cooking their food with excessive oil, salt, and spices. I feel like this completely eliminates the value and nutrition of food, but I never tell them not to eat like that because there could be many underlying reasons why their eating habits are that way. Thus, in the survey, there would be questions asking what they eat on a daily basis, how many fruits and vegetables (or natural/unprocessed) foods they eat a day, how their families cook and/or eat, how many times they eat out at restaurants, and the like. By gathering this data, I could better understand how the typical college student eats and why they eat that way. Learning about their eating habits might also educate me about how people in general treat food, and the direction that America is going in terms of food habits. In order to decrease nonresponse/nonparticipation bias, I would offer 5 $30 cash rewards to 5 random survey takers. This way I can come to a more correct conclusion about their eating habits. Typically, with a sample size of 1000, the margin of error is 2-3%. This would be easy to accomplish, since there are so many more students that attend UCI.

A community-based research project I would imagine doing is either displaying the truth about mental illnesses or helping foster children have a better life in education or why people don’t believe programs like African American studies deserve funding. There are so many stereotypes about people with mental illnesses especially portrayed by the media that needs to be stopped. You are not your label, you are a person first. I used to mentor foster children so I would like for them to achieve a equal right to education and the opportunity to work towards improving their lives so I would want to research how I can create an organization that will address their needs. I’m sorry I have a lot of ideas, its just so much that I would like to do within the community. In addition, Ethnic Studies is super important and no minority is above the other. For example, why is there a Dept for Chican@, Latin@ Studies and just a Program in African American studies which is constantly being threatened and belittled. This needs to stop and I would like to interview and research more about this issue of not considering blacks worth studying.

I am currently not involved in any community based research, but a topic or main concern that interests me is how certain social determinants can affect access to health care. As a public health major, I’ve been able to learn more about how education or one’s family income can affect health due to lack of health care. i’ve done community service in Irvine called Clinic in the Park where they provide free health care to those who attend, without any question as to how much they make or where they come from. With that in mind, a project that I think would be interesting to start up would be to implement this type of system where health care is provided free of charge in public areas where those with lower socioeconomic status or in neighborhoods where there is poor environment and to see what type of health care is needed in certain areas and what kind of families (i.e. how many people in the family, employment or unemployment of both parents, type of education received of family members, etc) receive health care when it is provided to them free of charge. With this we can see if access to health care makes a difference in health outcome despite lower levels of education or income. Personally, I feel it’s important to treat people of all kinds for their health despite how much money they make or how much education they receive so that everyone gets a fair chance at a decent healthy life.

I have no experience about research, but what I want to do as a community research is connecting many organizations relating education.
I want to research about many organizations relating to education. Each organizations has own characteristic. Some may treat more Hispanic and others more African American. Even an area in an organization has a lot of Hispanic, there may be Asian, too. The organization knows a lot how to treat Hispanic students well, but may not know how to treat Asian well. If I can do research many organizations, I could find ways suitable for each kinds of students. Then, each organization can use data treat students which it is not good for, for example, minority in students who come.
Through research, I want to gather strength of each organization and provide all organizations. It should help each organization which has to deal a lot of kinds of students.