Introduction
This topic covers health education: its aims, the basic principles of health teaching, traditional and modern methods, the three models (forms) of organising it, and planning and evaluation.
Health education
- Health education is a process that informs, motivates and helps people to adapt to changes as needed to improve health, and conducts professional training and research.
- It aims at change of behaviour: an activity involving communication with individuals or groups aimed at changing knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and behaviour in order to improve health.
- Disease prevention: specific interventions aimed at avoiding contact with disease risk factors; prevention may be primary, secondary or tertiary.
Basic principles
- Interest: health teaching should relate to the interests of the people.
- Participation: the way of delivering knowledge should encourage participation to improve the learning process ("tell me, I will forget; teach me, I will remember; involve me, I will learn").
- Known to unknown: start with what people know, then build on this to teach a new thing.
- Comprehension: use easily understandable language; define terms.
- Reinforcement: repetition of new information.
- Motivation: realistic and short-term goals, with positive messages.
- Scientific precision and credibility: health information is based on scientific findings and current knowledge; the health educator should have recent scientific information, give correct information, and discuss and practise what they profess.
- Presentation: done in an attractive way to draw attention.
- Audience: good relations and personal qualities to reach out to the audience.