Health skills provide an individual with the tools and strategies to be able to take charge of their health. This can include promoting behaviors which keep him/her healthy and maintaining them throughout his/her life. If there are certain areas in an individual’s health which need improvement, he/she can make proper changes in order to protect and improve his/her health.

The interpersonal communication tools that help reduce health risks are –
1. Communicating with respect and care
2. Being a good listener.
3. Using “I” messages to express feelings

Advocacy is being proactive and taking actions to engage other individuals about health related causes and issues. This can include sharing information or showing support for a health cause.

By being knowledgeable about what factors influence your health, you can analyze how they play a role in your decisions and actions. Factors such as personal beliefs, family traditions and culture, peers, and the media can influence decisions and behaviors you will engage in. Positive influences and role models will guide you as you make informed choices independently. The same can be true for negative influences. Negative influences may increase the chance of you participating in riskier behaviors.

Advocacy puts the information you learned into action. When you learned about positive health behaviors together with risky behaviors, you can share this information through action. This can include participating in a health fair, speaking to lawmakers to improve access to health resources for the community, and making health information easy to understand for people of different backgrounds. Through advocacy, you can address issues and concerns for health problems as well as show your support for health issues and beliefs you care about.

There are several strategies I applied when managing stress. This included taking a walk around my neighborhood and taking in the nice weather, exercising while listening to my favor music, and practicing meditation exercises. I also went out to dinner with friends and had a great night of conversation.

I think all of these strategies were very helpful because it enabled me to experience relaxation through two mediums: individually through exercise and meditation and socially through conversation with friends. This balance of both personal time and social time with loved ones are important to relieve stress.

Marcos and Sarah may disagree because they want to see different movies. When writing the dialogue, you can have them talk it out before the movie and find alternatives so that they can compromise.

Marcos (or Sarah): Hmm…I know I really wanted to see this movie tonight. However, I can go see it with friends this weekend. Would you be interested in watching Movie A or Movie B instead?

Marcos (or Sarah): I’m not really interested in watching Movie A since I was not impressed with its prequel. However, Movie B sounds interesting from the trailers.

Marcos (or Sarah): Great! Both were good for me, but since you are cool with Movie B. Let’s go see that instead!

As we can see, being open-minded and flexible when discussing options can help resolve the conflict. In this case, they both discussed different options until they found one which they can both agree on. We can also see that Marcos or Sarah could see their preferred movie with other friends at a later date. By having this flexibility, all sides will have a beneficial result.