"The Most Beautifulest Campus on Earth"

The mission behind public health is to promote physical and mental health to prevent disease, injury and disabilities in a population.  The idea is to fix it before it's broken.  Public health enthusiasts live by the motto prevent, promote and protect to foster healthy communities.  With that being said, we've all been placed in clinical locations where we need to promote health to a specific population.  I have been placed at Misericordia.  For those of you that are unfamiliar, it is a predominately privately funded organization that strives to bring normalcy and maximize the potential of people with developmental disabilities.  It is a campus that accommodates 600 residents in small houses and apartments.  This place is so great that there is a waiting list that is 600 people long to get in.

Now those who know me, know this is not a population I am super comfortable with, but I'm embracing the experience.  I tend to dread the drive up Lakeshore to clinical, but find myself laughing all the way home because of something that happened that night.  We work with the higher functioning residents who live independently is a 60 person apartment complex.  The first couple of times we visited we just hung out and got to know the residents.  They are SOOOO excited to have visitors and very eager to introduce themselves and shake our hands.  It was quite cute how polite they were.  One woman always greats us very enthusiastically saying, "Welcome to Misericordia, the most beautifulest campus on earth!" every single week we come.  One day we made valentines.  I was lucky enough to get one from a resident and then another resident wanted to make one for the children at the hospital I work at.  She thought it was very sad that children have to be at a hospital.

L:  I was asked to write but did the hearts all herself
R: my personal valentine from a special friend 

After hanging out we get to eat dinner with them in the dining room.  It is sometimes hard to hold long conversations with the residents because in orientation we were told to help promote normalcy by talking about things they can relate to.  One of the guys asked what I was doing tomorrow and I said I had to work.  He asked for how long and I said for 12 hours and then he shouted Oh wow! 12 hours! at dinner.  Then a few minutes later, out of nowhere he said it again, it was quite hilarious.  Everyone at Misericordia has a "job" and they take them very seriously.  Some work in the restaurant on campus that raises money for the organization, some cut brownies in the bakery, some work in a grocery store.

After building rapport with the residents we have begun health club where we pair up with another student and prepare a health promotion lesson for all the residents.  Stephanie and I had portion control. We get there at 3 and have been paired up to do a health promotion lesson.  We took feedback from the previous pair that presented and were really excited to present.  We have a lot of props and visuals.  One of the activities was to have them pretend they were at dinner and draw the size their chicken would be on their plate and how much pasta they usually put on their plate.  After explaining instructions step by step his is what they drew...

Very few actually drew the food.  Needless to say it was a liiiiittle too abstract and we wrapped that activity up pretty quick.  I wasn't really sure how well they picked up the concept but then we were in line to get dinner and the resident who asked me to sit with her was like, look at this portion.  The pasta covered up much more of the plate than it should have.  Clearly she wasn't the one when drew the cat...