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Zayed University Students Launch Health Awareness Campaign |
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Three students from Zayed University’s College of Education in Abu Dhabi have launched a Health Awareness Campaign to teach children about the causes, symptoms and prevention of diseases. The campaign is sponsored by the Emirates Foundation for Philanthropy and is aimed at children aged from 4-13 years. The students behind the campaign have held workshops for children, parents and teachers at a number of schools in Abu Dhabi to raise awareness of a variety of health issues through fun learning activities and story-telling. Dr. Mona Al Bahar, Senior Executive Advisor for the Emirates Foundation’s Education and Social Development Programme, commented, "This innovative approach to health care teaches children in the UAE and their parents how to cope with fevers and illness, and how to protect themselves from infection. These skills will be useful to the children throughout their lives." According to Dr. Sharon Lynne Bryant, Assistant Professor at Zayed University’s College of Education in Abu Dhabi, the Health Awareness Campaign first started two years ago when some of her students wrote a series of three health booklets for children in both Arabic and English. The booklets, "Ooh! My Teeth!", "Fever" and "Ooh! It Itches!", introduce children to the importance of proper dental care and to how diseases like chickenpox and influenza are spread. Speaking about the students responsible for this campaign, Dr. Bryant said, "Ameera -Hamiri, Haleema Abdullah and Nahla Al-Sayed began promoting the health booklets produced by their colleagues by organizing the school workshops and by applying innovative teaching techniques to deliver the health awareness message to the children". Ameera Al-Hamiri, One of the students involved in the campaign said, "It’s a great experience to be able to go to schools and interact with children and enhance their awareness of health related issues." Haleema Abdullah, who also worked on the project, commented, "As Dr. Bryant’s research assistants, we are now working on producing additional booklets that tackle issues like childhood obesity, diabetes and the importance of exercise. We hope the new booklets and their workshops will be as well received as the first series." Nahla Al-Sayed, the third member of the team, added, "Organizing the health awareness workshops was a real challenge for us as we constantly had to come up with new fun and educational activities to keep the children interested in the subject of health care." |
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