Young people need to be prepared to be healthy and qualified people. It is, however, uneasy to achieve this. Programme for health improvement of the young people is made, but so far there are still areas to be improved.
This is indicated by health problems that are found among the young people. Problems are mainly caused by bad environment, lack of right information, and lack of health facilities that are comprehensive and friendly to them.
Seeing this condition, five students from health cluster in Universitas Gadjah Mada conduct a youth empowerment programme adopting a collaboration approach to run a Student Creativity Program entitled Young Health Workers (JUARA). These students are Wahyulin Aprilia (Midwifery), Diny Lela Ramdany (Midfwifery), Dicky Yulianda (Medical Education), Fahri Al Irsyad (Psychology), and Imroatus Sholihah (Nutrition Science).
“Through the Student Creativity Program, the Young Health Workers (JUARA) group wants to give a real contribution to the young people. The students can be a role model for their young peers,” said Wahyulin Aprilia at Faculty of Medicine UGM on Thursday (18/5).
According to Wahyulin Aprilia, with this strategic role, the health sciences students can position themselves as health workers who are actively engaged in improving the health of the young people. To maximise their roles, members of JUARA are made up of various health professions, named as Interprofessional Collaboration (IPC). The IPC is expected to be able to give health services to young people comprehensively due to their health education background.
"The focus of JUARA are two, development of youth health services with the interprofesional collaboration approach, and empowerment of cadre of JUARA as peer-tutors," said Wahyulin.
Wahyulin explained the cadres of JUARA are students of MAN 2 Bantul high school that have passed selections. Training has been conducted five times on reproductive health and youth rights, psychological change and problems among youth, physiological anatomy of reproductive health organs, oral and dental health, and nutritions. Furthermore, soft skills are taught to the youth, too.
"Activities of the programme have been discussed and prepared in advance with the youth so that the programme can materialise well,” said Wahyulin.