DISTANCE LEARNING COURSE TO PREVENT HEALTH RISKS IN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

The dramatic increase of health problems in adolescents, including sexual risk behaviors, HIV infections, obesity, alcohol and drug abuse, injury and violence, depression and suicide, lack of physical activity, is a public health problem in the northwest region of Mexico. The School of Medicine and Psychology of the Autonomous State University of Baja California (UABC) campus Tijuana, decided to build a curriculum under the competence model, to meet the needs of all the University students in order to teach them first, in a very simple manner, how their body works and what to do to maintain health in the course of their lives, and to prevent through education, unhealthy conditions such as sexually transmitted and chronic degenerative diseases. A private telecommunication company signed a collaboration agreement with UABC to provide the Webconference ™ system to enhance the interaction with the blackboard platform that is already been used at UABC for distance learning and real-time lecturing, and start with a pilot group to detect deficiencies in the content of the course, the language used, the accuracy in the development of the classes, the quality of the transmission of video and audio, and to evaluate the impact of the course in the students’ lives. The main competence to obtain by the students is to identify the health risk behaviors through the analysis of cases, exercises, and updated knowledge to reaffirm or modify conducts to have better quality of life for themselves, their families and for the whole society. The course is titled “Health and Wellness” and one of its goals is that the students become multipliers of the information they receive and discuss through the web, in an atmosphere of respect, honesty and responsibility. Consequently, by changing their bad habits for good behaviors and adopting good health practices in their everyday life they will communicate to their friends, neighbors and family, the need to be more careful with their bodies and personal lifetime health.