IHP 200 Module 4 Project One Example

Project One: A Wellness Plan for Maya, Age Fifteen

[Student Name]

Southern New Hampshire University

IHP 200: Wellness Across the Lifespan

Project One

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Project One: A Wellness Plan for Maya, Age Fifteen

Adolescence brings changes that make healthy routines harder: a biological shift toward later sleep, early school start times, more independence and near-constant access to phones. This project builds a wellness plan for a composite fifteen-year-old named Maya, whose mother brought her to Brookside Family Health Center because she seemed tired and irritable. The plan describes her current habits, compares them with national recommendations, explains why they matter at her stage of life, sets goals with her and proposes strategies, supports and measures.

Maya's Current Habits

Maya is a tenth grader with good grades that have slipped this year. She wakes at 6:10 a.m. for a bus at 6:45 and usually falls asleep around 12:15, averaging about six hours on school nights and sleeping until noon on weekends. She estimates seven hours a day on her phone outside schoolwork, mostly social media and videos, often in bed. She played soccer for six years but quit in the fall, saying she was too tired and her friends had stopped. She walks about fifteen minutes a day between classes. She describes feeling anxious before school and sometimes sad in the evenings, though she denies thoughts of self-harm.

Sleep Compared with Recommendations

Paruthi et al. (2016), writing a consensus statement for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, recommended that teenagers aged 13 to 18 sleep eight to ten hours per 24 hours on a regular basis. The panel reported that regularly getting less than recommended is associated with attention, behavior and learning problems and with higher risks of accidents, injuries, obesity and depression, and in teens with self-harm thoughts. At about six hours on school nights, Maya is two to four hours short every weekday, and her long weekend sleep suggests she is repaying a debt that builds each week.

Activity Compared with Recommendations

For school-age youth, the federal activity guidelines described by Piercy et al. (2018) set a daily floor of one hour of moderate or harder movement, including vigorous activity and muscle- and bone-strengthening activity at least three days a week. The guidelines note benefits for fitness, bone health, weight and symptoms of depression. With about fifteen minutes of walking a day since leaving soccer, Maya falls well short.

Screen Time and Well-Being

Twenge and Campbell (2018) analyzed a large national survey of parents reporting on children aged 2 to 17. Beyond about an hour a day, more screen time was associated with lower psychological well-being, including less curiosity, lower self-control and more difficulty finishing tasks, and the links were stronger among adolescents than younger children. Teens using screens seven or more hours a day were about twice as likely as low users to have been diagnosed with depression or anxiety. The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that screens cause these problems, but it supports treating heavy use as a risk worth addressing, especially when it cuts into sleep.

How the Habits Connect

Maya's habits reinforce one another. Phone use in bed pushes her bedtime later, and light and stimulation from screens make it harder to fall asleep. Short sleep leaves her tired, which contributed to quitting soccer, and less activity can worsen mood and sleep quality. Her anxiety and low mood probably feed the pattern as much as they flow from it. A plan that targets only one habit is likely to fail; the most promising entry point is the nighttime phone use that links sleep and screens.

Goals Maya Chose

In a conversation with the medical assistant and physician, Maya agreed to three goals for the next eight weeks. First, phones leave her bedroom at 10:30 p.m. on school nights, charging in the kitchen. Second, lights out by 11:00 p.m. on school nights, aiming for at least seven and a half hours of sleep, with weekend wake times no later than 10:00 a.m. Third, at least thirty minutes of activity on five days a week, working toward sixty, with a plan to try the school's spring track team or a weekend recreational soccer league with a friend.

Strategies and Supports

Teenagers value independence, so strategies should be offered, not imposed. Maya will set an automatic do-not-disturb schedule on her phone from 10:30 p.m. and use an inexpensive alarm clock instead of her phone. She will keep her room dim in the hour before bed and read or listen to music without screens. Her mother agreed to charge her own phone in the kitchen too, modeling the habit. Maya will text a friend to plan weekend activity. The physician will screen for depression and anxiety using a standard questionnaire and refer her to the school counselor, since her mood symptoms deserve attention in their own right.

Table 1. Maya's Goals, Strategies and Measures

Note. Measures are simple enough for Maya to track herself.

Measuring Progress

Maya will keep a simple log in a notes app of bedtime, wake time, whether her phone left the room and activity minutes. At a follow-up visit in four weeks and again at eight weeks, the medical assistant will review the log with her, the physician will repeat the mood questionnaire and the team will adjust goals. Success means progress, not perfection: moving from six to seven and a half hours of sleep would be a meaningful gain.

Barriers and Life Stage

The early bus is a barrier Maya cannot control; many experts argue that later school start times would help teens, and her mother may raise this with the school board. Social pressure to stay online at night is real, so Maya and her friends might agree on a shared cutoff. The plan also depends on her mother's support without becoming a battle, which is why Maya chose the goals herself.

Conclusion

Maya's fatigue and irritability reflect a tangle of short sleep, heavy screen use and lost activity common in adolescence. Measured against national recommendations and research, her plan targets the nighttime phone habit that links them, uses goals she chose and involves her family while respecting her growing independence.

References

Paruthi, S., Brooks, L. J., D'Ambrosio, C., Hall, W. A., Kotagal, S., Lloyd, R. M., Malow, B. A., Maski, K., Nichols, C., Quan, S. F., Rosen, C. L., Troester, M. M., & Wise, M. S. (2016). Recommended amount of sleep for pediatric populations: A consensus statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 12(6), 785-786. https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.5866

Piercy, K. L., Troiano, R. P., Ballard, R. M., Carlson, S. A., Fulton, J. E., Galuska, D. A., George, S. M., & Olson, R. D. (2018). The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. JAMA, 320(19), 2020-2028. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2018.14854

Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2018). Associations between screen time and lower psychological well-being among children and adolescents: Evidence from a population-based study. Preventive Medicine Reports, 12, 271-283. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmedr.2018.10.003