February 2004
Issue

The chapter at Anoka-Ramsey Community College in Minnesota helped students and faculty take the first steps toward setting and achieving personal goals for better health. During their Healthy Heart Week, members staffed a health information booth. In addition to simple solutions for improving health, visitors to the booth received paper hearts. The chapter encouraged visitors to set an achievable, health-related goal for the day or week and write the goal on the heart as a reminder. Those who met their goals during the week could return their hearts and be entered into a drawing for healthy prizes.

In Ohio, the chapter at Stark State College of Technology partnered with a local suicide prevention coalition to shed light on health issues surrounding depression. The chapter hosted two informative seminars in which students, faculty and staff heard firsthand one woman's personal journey with depression from diagnosis to recovery. Depression screenings were offered and local mental health professionals were on hand to make attendees aware of resources available to those affected by depression.

For the chapter at Coffeyville Community College in Kansas, the chapter's monthly movie night became a forum for the discussion of the accessibility of quality health care. The chapter gathered for a night of fellowship to watch the movie Patch Adams. Following the movie, members engaged in a lively discussion of how the movie related to issues addressed by the Honors Study Topic focusing on the quality of health care available to those with no health insurance and limited ability to afford health care costs.

Want to make your voices heard on the issues surrounding the quality of health care in America?

If so, your chapter can join forces with the chapter at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa in their Alliance of Leaders Proposing Healthcare and Insurance for Everyone (Project ALPHIE). The purpose of the project is to organize Phi Theta Kappans into a united voice and raise awareness of growing health care concerns. Chapters can participate by asking members to sign a petition associated with the project and forwarding signed petitions to their political leaders. Chapters should plan to send signed petitions between February 1 and February 28. For more information about Project ALPHIE, contact chapter president Randall Hixson at randall.hixson@ptk.org.

These projects are just a sampling of the many ways your chapter can wrap up its study of Dimensions and Directions of Health: Choices in the Maze.