Course Project—Plan to Address Health Issue

Running head: APPLICATIONS OF THE PRECEDE-PROCEED MODEL 0

Applications of the PRECEDE-PROCEED Model

Joseph Toole

Health Promotion and Disease Prevention

3 Jan 2016

Unprotected sexual intercourse among teens is one of the major negative health behaviors in the current society. The sexual intercourse among teens has predisposed teenagers to sexually transmitted diseases and early pregnancy. The rate of intercourse among the teenagers has been on the rise and this raises eyebrows on the intervention strategies that need to be adopted in reducing the behavior among the teenagers. The major reason why the health behavior has been on the increase is due to influence by the media and lack of information among the teenagers. It is therefore important to address the problem before it becomes a major disaster in the society.

The behavior of intercourse is problematic to the society. One of the factors that make it problematic is how the teenagers are predisposed to sexually transmitted diseases. Most of the teenagers are not informed on the health dangers of their behaviors and end up risking their lives. Some of the sexually transmitted diseases are very dangerous and could lead to death such as HIV/AIDs, which means that if the health behavior is not taken care of, then more teenagers are expected to die. It is therefore important that the behavior is paid the attention that it deserves before the mortality rate resulting from the behavior increases (Li, 2009).

There are a number of predisposing, reinforcing, and enabling factors that influence unprotected sexual intercourse among the teenagers. One of these factors is the media. The media has played a major role in influencing sexual intercourse among teenagers. Nowadays, the media brings programs that even show the people having sexual intercourse. Since teenagers always want to experiment what they see, they will want to try it out, leading to unprotected sexual intercourse. With the introduction of internet and smart phones, teenagers nowadays can watch anything and since it is difficult to filter the content from the internet, it becomes impossible to control what the teenagers are watching. The other PRE factor considered to increase the prevalence of unprotected sexual intercourse among the teenagers is lack of information about sex by the teenagers. Even though many teenagers are exposed to the internet and other sources of information, they do not have information on how to practice safe sex. The parents are also shying away from educating their children, an aspect that makes the teenagers oblivious of the dangers involved in practicing unprotected sex. Most of the teenagers practice unsafe sex since they do not know the health dangers involved. Some of them think that pregnancy is the only thing that should be avoided during sex not knowing that there are other many health dangers that can be avoided by having safe sex (Li, 2009).

One the major interventions that need to be made is encouraging the parents to educate their children. Parents need to teach their children of the dangers that are involved in unprotected sexual behaviors and the risks that are involved. Additionally, the parents need to know the sites that their children are visiting and the influence that they have on their perceptions about sexual behaviors. By keeping an eye on what the children are watching, it becomes possible to be able to learn what the children are doing and control their decisions based on what they see over the internet. Through such interventions, it will be possible to reduce the rates of unprotected sexual behaviors among the teenagers.

References

Li, Y., Cao, J., Lin, H., Li, D., Wang, Y., & He, J. (2009). Community health needs assessment with precede-proceed model: a mixed methods study. BMC health services research, 9(1), 1.