Introduction to Health Education

1. Introduction to Health Education Dr. Mahmoud Alhussami

2. Valued Outcomes • Define health, health education, andhealth promotion. • List and describe the components that make up wellness. • Identify why health education is a necessary component in the nation’s organizations.

3. The Evolution of Health Education • Formal health education began as instruction in anatomy and physiology • Health was taught as a science with emphasis on retention of facts • Some health educators began using “scare tactics,” but this resulted in negative clients’ attitudes toward health and health educators. • Subsequent use of a “crisis–oriented” approach led to a narrow focus, leaving many topics out.

4. The Evolution of Health Education • Today, the emphasis is on producing resiliency skills. • Current declines in early death rates can be attributed more to lifestyle changes than to medicine. • Americans are in the middle of a health promotion movement, while developing countries are in the beginning. • The change of today’s health educators is to motivate citizens to improve their own health status through positive self-direction.

5. People are living longer!

6. Drugs and medical care +5 years

7. Public Health impact +25 years

8. What does being healthy mean to you? • "Being healthy" means different things to different people. People's ideas of health and "being healthy" vary widely. They are shape by their experiences, knowledge, values and expectations. • For the general public "being healthy" mean "NOT BEING ILL" or NO DISEASE. • For some people "being healthy" is like building up strength and having resistance to infection.

9. What is Health? • The Joint Committee on Health Education Terminology (2002) stated that health is “an integrated method of functioning which is oriented toward maximizing the potential of which the individual is capable. It requires that the individual maintain a continuum of balance and purposeful direction with the environment where he (she) is functioning.” • Health has several dimensions, each with its own continuum. • Health is also referred to as wellness.

10. What is Health? • Each individual is ultimately responsible for her or his well-being and must accept responsibility. • To enable people to experience high-level wellness, educators and others must assist citizens to see themselves as being in control of improving their quality of life. • Educators and others also must assist citizens to develop a sense of self-efficacy, or a belief in one’s ability to accomplish a specific task or behavior.

11. HealthWHO (1948) • "a state of complete physical, mental and social well being, and not merely the absence of a disease or infirmity.“ • Health means having the ability to adapt continually to constant changing demands. Expectations and stimuli is much preferable than the WHO definition.

12. Components of Wellness • Spiritual—activities that address issues such as meaning and purpose in life; self-awareness; connectedness with self, others, and a larger reality. • Social—the ability to interact successfully with people and one’s personal environment; maintain intimacy; and respect differences. • Physical—the ability to carry out daily tasks, develop cardiovascular fitness, muscular fitness, maintain adequate nutrition and proper weight, avoid abusing drugs/alcohol, and not use tobacco products. • Environmental—maintaining safe water, food, and air. Having a safe emotional and physical environment in which to live. • Emotional—the ability to control stress and to express emotions appropriately and comfortably. • Intellectual—the ability to learn and use information effectively for personal, family, and career development.

13. Health Education and Health Promotion • The Joint Committee on Health Education Terminology states that health education is the “continuum of learning which enables people, as individual members of social structures, to voluntarily make decisions, modify and change social conditions in ways which are health enhancing.” • SOPHE (Society for Public Health Education) states health education is "any combination of learning experiences that promote voluntary actions & informed decisions conducive to health." • Michael O'Donnell, editor of the American Journal of Public Health defines health promotion as "any combination of health education, and related organizational, political, and economic intervention designed to facilitate behavioral and environmental changes conducive to health.

14. Health Education and Health Promotion • Health promotion is broader in scope than health education. • Health education is a format that can be used to influence health and quality of life. • Health education is the process of developing and providing learning experiences in order to supply information, change attitudes, and influence behavior by helping develop the client’s sense of individual responsibility, decision-making skills, self-esteem, self-confidence, and sense the ability to achieve success. • This is accomplished through learning experiences that develop decision-making ability.

15. Definition of health education Health education is a systematic social educational activity which has plan, organization, and evaluation. It spreads the knowledge related to health care to people. It assists people to understand themselves heath status, recognize the factors harming health. It makes people change their ill life habits and behaviors, and adopt the behaviors and life styles conducive to health actively, and reduce and eliminate the health risk factors in order to prevent illness, promote health and increase the quality of life.

16. Health Education and Health Promotion • Health Education is a lifelong process in which people: • assume responsibility for their health and health care and actively participate in the decision-making process. • respect the benefits of medical technology without being awed (frightened). • try new behaviors and modify others. • are skeptical of health fads (fashion) and trends (tendency). • ask question and evaluate health information. • strive for self-reliance (independence) in personal health matters. • voluntarily adopt practices consistent with a healthy lifestyle.

17. Accomplishing Health Education • Health education can help ensure this generation is fit to assume the tasks of adulthood. • Relevant, motivating health education requires careful planning. • Time must be allotted for health instruction, even if it must be incorporated into other subjects. • Health must be taught every semester, every grade kindergarten through high school and university and must be developmentally appropriate. • Meaningful health education must blend information with attitudinal experiences (confluent education). • Factual information alone is not enough to produce behavior change; it must be personalized.

18. Accomplishing Health Education • To accomplish its objectives, health instruction must be:Sequential, Planned—based on goals, outcome-related objectives, and evaluation criteria. Comprehensive—it should include all identified health content areasTaught by qualified health educators—individuals trained in the content area. • The list of topics that need to be covered continues to expand (adolescent suicide, child abuse, violence). • Schools must work within the community and with the family to promote high-quality health.

19. Why Health Education • Health behaviors are the most important determinant of health status. • Health behaviors are learned and changeable. • The best time to begin formal health education is in the elementary school, when students are more flexible and accepting of positive health behaviors. • Most health problems are due to smoking, poor nutrition, overweight, lack of exercise, stress, abuse of drugs & alcohol, and unsafe personal behavior. • Behaviors in childhood and adolescence contribute significantly to heart disease, cancer, and injuries.

20. Why Health Education • Almost 75% of 5-24-year-olds mortality, morbidity, and social problems due to motor vehicle crashes, homicides, suicides, and injuries. • Health education suffers from lack of importance and adequately trained educators. • Health education could help prevent many of the leading causes of death. • The chronic diseases killing people today cause a tragic loss of human potential.

21. The Challenge of Health Education • Health professionals and professional organizations have been working for more than twenty years to improve the competency of health educators. • Effective health education teachers need academic preparation and appropriate personal qualities. • Methodology used in health education demands an open and accepting environment. • Every nurse is a health educator because nurses teach as much by their behavior as by what they say. • Learning health requires active learning opportunities to clarify values and make wiser decisions.

22. Barriers to Successful Health Teaching • Health educators face shrinking budgets and competing priorities. • Health educators must be aware of and responsive to cultural diversity and value differences • Most people receive little instruction in health content and methodology. • A discrepancy, called cognitive dissonance, often exists between personal knowledge and general health behavior.

23. Barriers to Successful Health Teaching • Learning how to incorporate a healthful behavior into one’s lifestyle requires specific methodologies not necessarily found in other disciplines. • Health instruction requires active involvement of people. • The tremendous amount of health information is both interdisciplinary and constantly changing. • The controversial topics in health education can offend people.

24. Barriers to Successful Health Teaching • Health education sometimes is viewed as negative and health educators as trying to prevent people from having fun. • Some administrators at work place low priority on health education. • The No Child Left Behind program may allow health to be integrated into the curriculum.

25. Factors that Affects Health • Genetic make-up. • Gender and age. • Family. • Religion and culture. • Friends (social life). • Employment status and income. • Advertising. • Health services. • Access to leisure facilities. • Self-esteem and self confidence. • Environmental pollution and many others….

26. Purpose of Health Education • To teach the clients to build up a correct awareness on health. • To change the clients’ ill (unhealthy) life habits. • Tonurture well (healthy) behaviors and life style.

27. To reduce or eliminate health risk factors. • To prevent illness, promote health and enhance the health level of whole nationality.

28. The Roles and Functions of Nurses in the Health Education (1) To provide much information related to health. (2) To assist the client to recognize the factors influencing health.

29. (3) To assist the client to identity the actual and potential health problems (4) To instruct the client to adopt healthy behavior

30. Tasks of Health Education • To assist the clients to build up a feeling of responsibility on preventing illness and maintaining oneself health status.

31. To create an environment that helps to individual’s behavior change; to promote the individual to adopt the advisable decision-making and select the behaviors that help to health.

32. To instruct the client to master the knowledge related to the care of illness and healing in order to enhance the abilities of self -health care and self-care. In this way, the client will become a healthy person and a person with high quality of life.

33. Process of Health Education (A) To assess individualslearning needs (B) To establish the teaching and learningobjectives. (C) To constitute the teaching plan (D) To implement the teaching plan (E) To evaluate the teaching and learning

34. To Assess the individuals Learning Needs To assess leaning ability. To assess psychological status. To assess social-cultural background.

35. To assess learning attitude. To assess prevenient (preceding) learning experiences To assess learning preparation. To assess the learning needs.

36. SHOKRAN