Addie Benning grew up wanting to work in health and nutrition, inspired by her father who stressed the importance of wellness. Her grandfather's cancer diagnosis reinforced her belief that lifestyle plays a role in disease. As a health educator, she hopes to educate people on leading healthier lifestyles to combat alarming statistics on obesity, heart disease, and cancer. She will use cognitive-based and behavior change philosophies to help people understand health risks and modify unhealthy habits. Her goal is to become a registered dietician and help others eat right through education and promotion of wellness.

1. Addie Benning
February 19, 2013
Personal Health Education Philosophy Paper
“Wellness is not a static, unchanging state; it is an active process of becoming aware of and
learning to make healthy choices.” Everyone has the ability to lead a healthy life. It’s our strength
and will power as humans that determines the kind of lifestyle we will lead.
Growing up we were all faced with the question, what do you want to be when you grow
up? For most kids and teens they fantasied about becoming a doctor, or a lawyer, or even a super
star, but for me I always knew I wanted to work around the health field and especially with
nutrition. As a child I always had a great role model when it came to wellness, my dad. As a little
girl I watched him always make time to go to the gym and workout, he would always stress to me
how important it is to take care of your body. He not only was very active, he also ate very well,
and the older I got the more he taught me about nutrition and wellness. I eventually started to join
him at the gym and from there my love for working out and eating right grew intensely through out
the years. So I guess you could say my desire to become a health educator all started because of the
examples my father gave me growing up, but more recently I also had a major occurrence in my life
that made me realize more then ever how much I truly want to be a health educator. My Grandpa
was diagnosed with cancer about 2 years ago today. Watching the strongest man I know suffer
through such a vicious disease really took a tole on me. I truly believe that nutrition and our way of
living plays a huge role when relating to cancer and I would want nothing more then to be able to
educate people on how to lead a more healthier lifestyle. My experience with my grandpa allowed
me to open my eyes and realize how many people out there are lacking the knowledge and
education it takes to lead healthy lifestyles.
In our world today 68% of Americans are said to be over weight or obese, and the number
one cause of death is heart disease followed by cancer. One of every four deaths in America are

2. related to cancer and every day over 1500 lives are taken by cancer. These statistics are what make
me so driven to become a health educator. Everyday we see more and more discoveries of all these
life threatening diseases and epidemics and still everyday, we still see people choose to eat that Big
Mac and that extra large fry, that right there proves we as a country need a change. These statistics
are not okay with me and are one of the many reasons why I want to pursue a career as an Health
Educator.
A health educator is said to promote, maintain, and improve one’s health, and I could not
agree more. As a health educator I hope to not only promote health education, but also to help
others improve their health throughout their life. I could never imagine wanting to pursue another
career outside of the health field. Aside from my experiences with my family, I also feel that many
of the classes I have taken have helped contribute to the knowledge that I will need for my future
profession. When first starting college I was undeceive of where I wanted to go with the health
field. I thought about nursing, sports nutrition, and also PA (physician assistant) school, but in the
end I really think I have made the right choice choosing this major. One class that really stood out
to me is my nutrition class, my overall goal is to someday become a registered dietician and
specialize on helping people eat right.
As a health educator I would expect to use many different philosophies, but mainly focus on
the behavior change philosophy and the cognitive-based philosophy methods. I believe by using the
cognitive-based philosophy it would allow me to educate the community on the prevention,
statistics, and long term effects of many prevailing diseases. On the other hand the behavior change
philosophy would mostly help people except their unhealthy habits and work towards a goal to
modify and correct them. By mixing these philosophies it will allow for a more diverse approach
and also better understanding. Being a health educator means you have to take your knowledge and
figure out whats best for your clients and every client will be different depending on what type of
environment they came from and also depending on what kind of knowledge they have already
about wellness. These philosophies together are what make our jobs as health educators so

3. important.
In life we all struggle with the word balance and just like everyone else I do the same. My
personal philosophy has helped me work at becoming better at balancing all life’s obstacles and has
allowed me to grow into a more educated and well rounded individual. I hope to use all of my
knowledge and experiences to help me better educate and promote healthy lifestyles and to allow
everyone the chance of a long and happy life.