OTD Students Chalk the Block to Promote Health

Published April 19, 2023                                                        By Darlene Muguiro                                                            UTEP College of Health Sciences

April is National Occupational Therapy Month, and the UTEP Doctor of Occupational Therapy (OTD) Program is celebrating with several outreach events, including an Open House for alumni and friends to learn about the newly approved OTD degree, as well as campus and community activities focusing on health promotion through an occupational therapy lens.

This week, several groups of OTD students in the Activity Analysis and Advanced Clinical Reasoning course taught by Dr. Kaleigh Stevens, clinical assistant professor, visited three different sites in El Paso to promote awareness on selected health topics through sidewalk chalk art. The “chalk the block” locations included the El Paso Public Health Department in Downtown El Paso, where students focused on diabetes awareness and management, and community mental health resources; the program’s Campbell Building location, where students concentrated on STI awareness and prevention; and the breezeway in front of the Health Sciences and Nursing (HSSN) building, where students drew attention to mental health and resources available on campus. 

“I asked the students to identify a population and then identify a need within that population that occupational therapy can address,” Stevens explained. “So, the students did all the research and came up with the topics. For example, the population for the HSSN location was undergraduate and graduate students, and some of the health problems that the students identified for this population include anxiety and feelings of depression.”

Nicholas Guerra and Jessica Gutierrez, OTD students in the HSSN location, detailed what they found during the research phase of the project.

“We found high rates of anxiety among college students, just trying to manage that work-life balance with their heavy load,” said Guerra. “We’re trying to exhibit some coping mechanisms to hopefully promote mental health and decrease anxiety and depression in college students, to help with their motivation to keep going to school.”

Gutierrez added that the group discovered that suicide is the second-leading cause of death among college students.

“We wanted to focus our presentation in that area to give students an option about what they can do, and to learn how we can prevent this,” she said.

OTD students Miguel Duran and Elisa Gutierrez described how the groups used the information they gained from their research to portray specific themes in two different art pieces.

“We wanted this art piece to show how to treat mental health, so we went with the idea of nurturing your mind, and we used a spring aesthetic to include flowers,” Duran said. “We also included two extensions for the National Suicide Hotline and the services that UTEP provides, such as the CAPS program.”

Gutierrez added that the second piece focused on coping strategies, something she says that OTs are really good at suggesting in their practice.

“We know that anxiety is prevalent among college students, so our drawing offered coping strategies, like spending time with friends and family, listening to music, exercising, practicing some form of meditation and breathing exercises, and taking walks in nature,” she said.

The artwork will be on display through the end of this week.

###

Go Miners!

For more information about the Doctor of Occupational Therapy degree, please visit: www.utep.edu/chs/ot.