Closing Words

It was bittersweet to see this summer’s service learning project come to an end. Time spent with the consumers and staff at Piper Place has been an enlightening and encouraging experience. The group learned important information about disease processes and complications along with preventative techniques. The health promotion study was a great opportunity for the consumers to keep track of their own health factors. Although our implementations did not yield any statistically significant results, the targeted population, community, and I learned the importance of health promotion. More extensive study into individual cases and specific interventions is essential to improving health promotion. We learned that education is a needed priority within healthcare, especially for groups with learning disabilities or who are more prone to disease. I hope to see more effective interventions aimed at successful health promotion in future research.