The department of Community Medicine arranged a health awareness walk at F-9 Park, Islamabad, on June 23, 2022. Students of the class of 2024 participated in this awareness walk; before this, they designed their health awareness material in the form of slogans on hand-made posters. For this activity, students were divided into 14 groups. They were assigned a topic related to respiratory diseases in the RESP module in Year 3. The topics included smoking hazards, early tuberculosis diagnosis, secondary prevention of asthma and COPD, COVID-19 vaccination, seasonal allergies and environmental pollution.

For the first part of the activity, students were asked to make health promotional messages/slogans based on preventive measures for the given topics. This was conducted in small groups where the students rehearsed the delivery of health messages in the environment of SCM.

The second part of the activity was “Walk for a Cause” at the F-9 park, where students participated in the health awareness walk along with the faculty of Community Medicine supervised by Dr Sajida Naseem and Dr Saima Rafi. The students also gave health educational messages to the visitors at the park and counselled them on preventive measures for different diseases. They also recorded health awareness videos at the park.

The students took an active part in both activities and found these to be useful for teaching and learning.