PEER-LED TEACHING AND SUPPORT TO REDUCE EATING DISORDERS ON CAMPUS
Keywords:
Peer instruction, health education, peer health educationAbstract
Increasingly, university students seek help for eating issues, and along with the eating issues, they often present with multiple underlying problems that require intensive support and challenge university resources. In this paper, I share highlights of my ongoing practice-research program, “It‘s Not about Food” (INAF), designed to identify and address knowledge and social support needs of university women with self-identified eating issues, and the specific support rendered by upper level nursing students whoserved as peer facilitators. These highlights are contextualized through a short film depicting the peer learning process. Mixed-method evaluation of the project conveyed the meaning, effectiveness, and value of the INAF group. For women living with eating issues, the group became a safe zone enabling contemplation of personal and health changes, including the need for seeking outside support and guidance for nutritional and mental health concerns. From the perspectives of the nursing students as
peer facilitators, the most salient finding was their learning how to preserve rapport, a strategy which helped them get to know the participants as persons beyond the eating issues, and to feel as though they are developing greater competency, professional satisfaction, and leadership capacity. The facilitators pondered the practicality of this type of therapeutic practice within their traditionally timepressed, task-focused clinical placements. In the final analysis, INAF provided participants and peer facilitators with a transformed view of self and global concerns, such as the need for prevention interventions targeting younger persons and support for men and older persons living with eating issues.
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