Health Promotion: Portfolio Task 3

This is the third of 5 pass/fail tasks, each worth 2% that you will
complete across the course.
Complete the task below, which focuses on environmental perspectives
of health promotion and prepares you for your upcoming assessments.
Make sure you submit Q1&2 in next weeks tutorial class. You must
have also posted your discussion board comment by the day of next
weeks tutorial. If you require help or feedback on any of your
responses, ensure you contact your tutor.
Task
For this portfolio task you will need to undertake a walking audit of a
designated route you can choose this is a great way to get a feel for
environments and assess whether they are conducive to health
change, or whether they need adaptation. The audit paper and its
constituent items are contained in the prescribed reading for this week
posted on Black Board (Dannenberg et al, 2005).
Make sure you have a hard copy of the audit ready to use when
you take your walk!
Heres what you need to do.
1. Read the paper and ensure you understand its concepts and how
the audit in used.
2. Decide on your designated route, this should be at least a good 10
minute walk using a safe route from point A to B.
3. Download a free pedometer App on your smartphone (you can also
use a pedometer if you have one); open this now and activate. You
will use this to measure your route.
4. When you are sure of what you need to do, begin to walk the route
observing its standards relative to each of the items listed in the
audit.
5. Enjoy your walk!
6. When you have walked your route, provide a rating for each item
and then using the scoring pro-forma attached to the audit,

calculate a total score. Provide qualitative observations in the

spaces provided and record your pedometer step count.
The following two questions are to be submitted to your tutor:
1. Present the quantitative data from your walking audit using a table
or figure (look at Gilson et al 2009 for examples of how you might
do this); also provide a summary of your qualitative observations.
Insert your responses here

2. Interpret your data what insights do they provide for the quality of
your walking route? What implications do they have for health
promotion practice? What were the strengths and weaknesses of
your approach?
Insert your responses here

The following question to be posted on discussion board under

your tutorial thread for portfolio task 3:
3. Undertake a search of the evidence base and identify another audit
tool or process for environmental health action (in diet, alcohol
consumption or smoking for example). Provide the reference and a
brief summary of the tool in your discussion thread.
The World Health Organisation (WHO), aiming to provide a reliable way
to identify those individuals who consume alcohol in a potentially
harmful and hazardous manner, developed the Alcohol Use Disorder
Identification Test (AUDIT). Its a simple, early identification method of
screening, which allows for the recognition of excessive drinking and
dependence (alcoholism). The AUDIT consists of 10 questions, broken
up into 3 different sections:

Questions 1-3 are aimed at identifying hazardous alcohol

use through assessing the frequency of regular and heavy
drinking, as well as a typical quantity consumed.
Questions 4-6 are aimed at identifying symptoms
indicating alcohol dependence through assessing morning
drinking, impaired control over drinking and increase
salience of drinking.
Questions 7-10 are aimed at identifying harmful alcohol
use through assessing post-drinking guilt, blackouts,
alcohol-related injuries and the presence of concern in
relatives and friends.
To complete the AUDIT, a self-report version or an interview version is
available, both with the same questions and scoring system.
Participants would answer each question accordingly and place their
answer a number from 0-4 in the appropriate box.
Scores between 8 and 15 are advised to focus on reducing hazardous
drinking. Scores between 16 and 19 are recommended to undertake
counselling under continued monitoring. Scores above 20 are advised
to be subject to further evaluation to correctly diagnose alcohol
dependence.
Reference: Babor. T, Higgins-Biddle. J, Saunders. J, Monterio. M, (2001).
The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test. World Health
Organisation, Department of Mental Health and Substance
Dependence.
Key learning points:
Environments are an important component of health promotion
efforts and strongly link to the ecological model of behaviour
change.
Using an audit tool to assess the environment can be an
important means of getting a feel for the issues that may be
influencing a group or community.
The data you collect from these types of audit can provide
important insights for interventions you should therefore
always do this kind of evaluation before starting an initiative.
Key readings
Dannenburg AL, Cramer TW and Gibson CJ. Assessing the
walkability of the workplace: A new audit tool. American Journal
of Health Promotion 2005; 20: 39-44.

 Gilson ND, Ainsworth B, Biddle S, Faulkner G, Murphy MH, Niven

A, Pringle A, Puig-Ribera A, Stathi A and M. Rene Umstattd. A
Multi-site Comparison of Environmental Characteristics to
Support Workplace Walking. Preventive Medicine 2009; 49: 2123.