天美传媒

Abstract

The current health ranking for the state of South Carolina is 19th out of 50 states. According to DHEC (2013), a rural county in South Carolina health care expenditures allocated to treat preventable diseases such as hypertension and cardiovascular disease totaled approximately $410,198,600 for hypertension and $138,300,500 for heart disease. The purpose of this action research project was to increase health literacy levels of South Carolina adolescents through the integration of a state-wide, internet, objective-based, health-related curriculum. The planned curriculum would use resources obtained from the CDC youth website, BAM. Implementing a structured curriculum across the state of South Carolina would be an effective and efficient method to ensure adolescents have an equal opportunity to increase his/her health awareness and disease prevention knowledge levels. Quantitative data was collected from the Short Assessment Health Literacy survey, SAHL, and used for analysis. The project investigated the impact of an increase in internet-based, health-related exposure at the secondary educational level would have health literacy levels of the targeted population. The project demonstrated the positive impact frequent of structured health-related information on the health literacy levels.

Biography

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