Week 9: Last Week at Native Health!
Hi Everyone, I hope your week went well! This week marked the very last week at my site placement, and I wanted to take a chance to reflect on my time there.
My site placement was at Native Health Phoenix, which is a public health focused nonprofit located in Central Phoenix. Their mission is to provide accessible healthcare as well as to provide a community space for the urban Phoenix Native American and Indigenous population. While I was there, I did a lot of work surrounding the event preparation aspect, which meant that I would pack flyers or I would make beading kits or even make keychains for the different events Native Health was holding.
One specific event that I helped with was Read It and Eat. Like I’ve said before, Read It and Eat is a kids cooking class. During the activity, which happens once a month at both the Central Phoenix and Mesa locations, little kids come, read a book, do a craft, and make a small dish. In the past, the food has been cucumber sandwiches and nachos. From what I observed, the goal of these foods is to help kids develop their fine motor skills through actions like cutting cucumbers, slicing garlic, or even mixing guacamole. Also, the Read It and Eat has been used to promote things like Dental Hygiene. For example, February is National Children’s Dental Health month, and at Native Health, the Read It and Eat theme was ‘teeth!’ So, they had a dentist come and talk about how to brush your teeth, a tooth-fairy themed book, and the craft was making small tooth pillows!
While I was at Native Health, I learned a lot that informed my view of public health, and individualism and collectivism. Seeing how public health was so involved with promoting collective wellbeing, through different initiatives, was super interesting, and it definitely opened my eyes up to the field of public health. Thank you for reading!
Here are some pictures of the different flyers I packed in bags for events.
