Welcome to Carrying Out Your Health Promotion Activity!
Welcome to your comprehensive study guide for Unit A2 4: Public Health and Health Promotion. Carrying out your health promotion activity is one of the most exciting parts of your CCEA A Level in Health and Social Care. Instead of just reading theory from a textbook, you get to step into the role of a health professional, plan an engaging session, and deliver real-world health education to a specific audience!
Don't worry if this feels a bit overwhelming at first. In these notes, we will break down the entire process step by step, showing you exactly what the examiners are looking for, how to link your delivery directly to health promotion theory, and how to avoid the common traps that cost students marks.
Key Takeaway: This unit is internally assessed through a portfolio/report (approximately 5,000 words across the full unit) and externally moderated by CCEA. It makes up 25% of the A2 Single Award and 15% of the overall Double Award.
---1. Group Size, Scope, and Individual Accountability
Before you jump into designing posters or quizzes, you need to understand the structural rules laid out by the CCEA specification.
Scope of the Task
You are required to plan, implement (deliver), and evaluate a small-scale health promotion activity. Your delivery must be a practical, focused event designed to promote health and well-being to a chosen group of people.
Working Individually vs. In a Group
You have two choices for delivery:
• Individual Delivery: You deliver the activity completely on your own.
• Group Delivery: You can work in a group of up to a maximum of five students.
Crucial Examiner Rule: If you work in a team of up to five, you can deliver the practical session together, but every candidate must produce their own individual written documentation and evaluation report. You cannot submit identical or joint write-ups. Your portfolio must clearly reflect your own specific contributions, thoughts, and reflections.
Memory Trick (The Rule of 5 & 1): A team can have up to 5 members in the room, but you must produce 1 unique portfolio that is 100% your own work!
---2. Choosing Your Target Audience and Setting
A health promotion activity cannot be one-size-fits-all. A presentation that works brilliantly for older adults in a care home will completely disengage a group of 11-year-olds in a secondary school.
Approved Settings and Target Groups
CCEA highlights several suitable settings for your small-scale activity:
• Schools: For example, delivering a session to Year 8 / Key Stage 3 pupils on dental hygiene, healthy eating, or physical activity.
• Day Centres: Working with adults with learning disabilities or older adults on hand hygiene or hydration.
• Residential Care Homes: Focusing on gentle mobility, falls prevention, or emotional well-being for residents.
• Community Centres or Youth Groups: Targeting local community members or teenagers.
• Early Years Settings: Engaging young children through fun games about handwashing or healthy snacking.
Adapting to Developmental Stage and Needs
When carrying out your activity, you must adapt your content to the cognitive ability, developmental stage, and specific health needs of your audience:
• Vocabulary & Tone: Avoid clinical jargon (like myocardial infarction or carcinogenic compounds). Translate medical concepts into clear, simple everyday language (such as heart health or harmful chemicals).
• Pacing & Attention Span: Year 8 pupils and early years children need short, energetic, interactive segments. Older adults or service users in day centres may prefer a calm, structured pace with plenty of time to process information.
• Accessibility: Use large, clear fonts on visual aids, high-contrast colours, and tactile or visual props for participants with sensory or learning needs.
Key Takeaway: Always pitch your activity directly to your target group. Tailoring your materials shows high-level planning and empathy for your participants.
---3. Applying Theoretical Approaches to Health Promotion
A major pitfall reported by CCEA examiners is that students simply deliver a presentation without connecting it to health promotion theory. To achieve high marks, your delivery must clearly reflect at least one recognised theoretical approach.
1. The Educational Approach
• Core Concept: Providing clear, accessible information, facts, and practical skills so that individuals can make their own informed, autonomous decisions.
• In Action: Explaining the Eatwell Guide, demonstrating how to read food nutritional labels, or showing Year 8 pupils how much hidden sugar is in energy drinks.
• Analogy: It is like giving someone a road map; you provide the information and route, but they decide where to drive.
2. The Behaviour Change Approach
• Core Concept: Encouraging individuals to actively change unhealthy habits and adopt positive lifestyle behaviours.
• In Action: Setting up an interactive goal-setting pledge where participants commit to swapping sugary snacks for fruit, drinking 2 litres of water a day, or increasing daily step counts.
• Focus: Focuses on personal responsibility and actionable lifestyle modifications.
3. The Fear Arousal Approach
• Core Concept: Using hard-hitting facts, vivid warnings, or imagery showing the serious negative consequences of unhealthy choices to prompt a protective change.
• In Action: Showing realistic pictures of smoker's lungs, demonstrating the severe decay caused by acidic drinks on tooth enamel, or discussing the immediate dangers of risky behaviours.
• Caution: Use this carefully! Fear arousal must always be paired with clear, achievable advice on how to avoid the danger, otherwise participants may feel helpless or simply tune out.
4. The Social Change Approach
• Core Concept: Highlighting how social environments, peer culture, school policies, and wider community norms shape health behaviours.
• In Action: Encouraging a school or youth club to change vending machine options, establishing a peer-support buddy system for physical exercise, or promoting smoke-free social zones.
5. The Medical / Preventive Approach
• Core Concept: Focusing on primary or secondary disease prevention, immunisation awareness, screening, and clinical risk reduction.
• In Action: Promoting the importance of vaccinations (e.g., HPV or flu vaccines), teaching the signs of illness, or demonstrating proper medical handwashing techniques to prevent infection spread.
Key Takeaway: Decide in advance which approach (or combination of approaches) your activity uses, and ensure your delivery techniques clearly demonstrate it in practice!
---4. Delivering the Activity: Practical Elements
Delivering an effective activity requires balancing engaging materials, polished communication skills, and strict ethical standards.
A. Resources and Materials
You can design completely original materials or adapt official resources from the Public Health Agency (PHA):
• Posters and Displays: Bright, eye-catching, and uncluttered summaries of core messages.
• Audiovisual Aids: Short video clips, slideshows, or music to maintain energy.
• Hands-On Props: Sugar display boards (bags of real sugar showing drink contents), dental models with oversized toothbrushes, or portion-size plates.
• Interactive Handouts & Quizzes: Crosswords, word searches, true/false cards, or digital quizzes (e.g., Kahoot) to keep the audience actively involved.
B. Communication and Engagement Skills
Your delivery style determines whether your message sticks:
• Active vs. Passive Delivery: Avoid standing at the front reading paragraphs off a PowerPoint slide! Walk around the room, ask open questions, invite volunteers, and use group discussions.
• Verbal Skills: Clear projection, warm tone, enthusiastic inflection, and appropriate vocabulary.
• Non-Verbal Skills: Open body language, steady eye contact, nodding, and encouraging smiles.
• Active Listening: Listening attentively to audience answers, validating their thoughts, and clarifying misconceptions politely.
C. Health, Safety, and Ethical Practice
Health and social care activities must always put participant well-being first:
• Risk Assessment: Checking the room for trip hazards (trailing cables), ensuring clear fire exits, checking food allergies if providing snacks, and verifying that props are safe to handle.
• Confidentiality: Ensuring participants do not share private medical details publicly, and keeping all collected feedback anonymous.
• Safeguarding: Working under the direct supervision of classroom teachers or care staff, following the host setting's child protection and vulnerable adult policies.
• Anti-Discriminatory Practice: Treating every participant with dignity and respect, ensuring materials represent diverse backgrounds, and making sure no one is excluded due to disability, language, or background.
5. Data Gathering During Delivery (Setting Up Your Evaluation)
You cannot evaluate how successful your campaign was unless you collect real, measurable evidence during the session itself.
Baseline vs. Exit Data
To prove that your activity taught the audience something new or influenced their attitudes, you must measure their knowledge before and after:
• Baseline Data (Pre-Activity): Administer a short 3-to-5 question quiz, a baseline questionnaire, or a show-of-hands tally before you start teaching to find out what participants already know.
• Exit Data (Post-Activity): Ask the exact same questions (or provide an exit slip / feedback questionnaire) at the end of your session.
Why This Matters
If \(30\%\) of Year 8 pupils knew the daily recommended sugar limit at the start, but \(95\%\) answered correctly on your exit quiz, you have concrete mathematical evidence that your educational approach succeeded!
You can also collect qualitative data (participant comments, observation tallies of engagement, feedback quotes) to evaluate your own communication skills.
Key Takeaway: Always build 5 minutes into your delivery schedule at the start and end for data collection. Without pre- and post-activity data, your post-activity evaluation will be weak and unsupported.
---6. Common Pitfalls to Avoid
CCEA examiners frequently point out the same recurring errors in student submissions. Make sure you avoid these:
1. The "Lecture Trap" (Passive Presentation):
Mistake: Talking at your audience for 30 minutes while they sit silently.
Fix: Include at least two interactive elements (e.g., a hands-on sorting task, a team quiz, or a practical demonstration).
2. Forgetting the Theoretical Link:
Mistake: Describing the fun games you played without ever mentioning health promotion models.
Fix: Explicitly explain how your props, words, and tasks put the Educational or Behaviour Change approach into practice.
3. Overly Complex Language:
Mistake: Reading complex medical definitions to younger pupils or care home residents.
Fix: Pilot your presentation with a friend or family member beforehand to check that the language is completely accessible.
4. Blurring Individual Roles in Group Work:
Mistake: Writing "We made the posters, we introduced the topic, and we evaluated the results."
Fix: Always state your specific contribution clearly: "While Sarah managed the slide transitions, I personally led the sugar identification activity and explained the nutritional label guidelines."
5. Forgetting to Collect Evidence:
Mistake: Delivering a great session but forgetting to hand out the exit surveys.
Fix: Print your feedback questionnaires and baseline quizzes well in advance, and make them an essential, timed part of your lesson plan.
Quick Summary & Checklist
Before you deliver your health promotion activity, run through this final checklist:
• Audience: Is the content specifically suited to the cognitive ability and setting of your target group?
• Approach: Have you explicitly linked your methods to a health promotion approach (e.g., Educational, Behaviour Change, Fear Arousal)?
• Interactivity: Are participants actively doing, discussing, or creating something rather than just listening?
• Safety & Ethics: Have you completed a risk assessment and safeguarded participant confidentiality?
• Data Gathering: Do you have your pre-activity baseline and post-activity exit tools ready to capture knowledge gain?
• Individual Role: Are you crystal clear on your specific responsibilities during the delivery?