An elderly person, phone-addicted teenager and someone who works remotely at their desk all day all walk into a room. What is one thing these people are likely to have in common? Bad posture.

A slumped back is common in society, but increasingly so today as more people forget to support themselves when looking down at their phone or staring at their computer screen for hours at a time. Realizing the issue of poor posture in the community, junior treasurer Avani Eckert and juniors Valerie Hall, Morgan Tran and Natalie Le have decided to do their HOSA Community Awareness project over back pain and posture.

HOSA, or Health Occupations Students of America, is a club for students interested in pursuing a field in healthcare, and is hosting its annual Spring Leadership Conference on Feb. 7 at Steele High School in San Antonio. Eckert, Hall, Tran and Le are competing in one of the group events, Community Awareness, naming their campaign “Backs on Track.”

“We wanted to choose a topic that wasn’t basic or overdone, but we also didn’t want it to be too niche to where it didn’t make sense to focus our campaign on it,” Eckert said. “We chose back pain and posture because we thought it was a prominent issue in our generation.”

There are a variety of events students can participate in, including team events such as Public Service Announcement, Biomedical Debate and more. There are other groups competing in Community Awareness too, such as the Skin Initiative, MRC (Medical Reserve Corps) and Project Care.

“I feel like my group and I have worked very hard to prepare our presentation and portfolio for the judges, but knowing the judging criteria and scoring system, I feel like it can be very easy to lose points if our presentation is not organized and conducted how they wish,” Tran said. “This also encouraged us to add small additional features into our presentation to earn bonus points that can help us in the long run and hopefully get us to advance further.”

To spread their campaign, the group posts weekly fun facts about the spine, informational details on minimizing back pain and advice from professionals on their Instagram account, @backsontrack. They have also put up flyers and passed out business cards and pamphlets with a QR code to a survey. 

“It’s fun and I feel helpful,” Hall said. “When we go around and put up fliers, spread awareness about our campaign through our social media posts and just share information about protecting your back, it makes me feel involved in the community. [During the interviews,] we learn new information that we didn’t know, which is definitely helpful to our campaign.”

The group has also interviewed various professionals in the community, such as a physical therapist, a healthcare marketer and chiropractor. Previously, HOSA members had an informational DEN with the chiropractor and the group asked HOSA sponsor, Amy Buffington to contact him again for an interview.

“The most challenging part has been trying to get community interaction and outreach,” Tran said. “We have contacted many businesses and healthcare professionals whose input we believe could’ve supported our project, however, some responded, while others did not. Getting students and teachers involved in our activities, such as our survey, has also been challenging.”

The event is scored based on a portfolio with all their promotions and events compiled and a five minute speech that the group has to put together. In order to advance to state, the team has to place in the top three groups.

“If we advance to state, the next step is to promote our campaign even more and do more activities,” Hall said. “We are planning to do larger activities such as webinars, partnering with businesses and other schools.”