Best4online.com: Health Education

During the 1970s and 1980s, health education emphasized altering individuals' behavior. In the 1990s, health education expanded to encompass social action and become more integrated with health promotion. Mayhew Derryberry wrote forty years ago.

Health education. . . requires careful and thorough consideration of the present knowledge, attitudes, goals, perceptions, social status, power structure, cultural traditions, and other aspects of whatever public is to be addressed. (1960)

Glanz and colleagues ( 1997) stated that advocacy, policy change, and organizational change have been adopted as central activities of public health education and health promotion. Thus, the merger of health education into the health promotion frame-work may be blurring the distinction between the two.

It is therefore no wonder that school adminis-trators, parents, community leaders, and employers do not understand what health educators actually do. This misunderstanding often leads to allocating responsibility for health education to people who have little academic

background in the field. In schools, people with little health education preparation often get the assignment. In hospitals, and even in health maintenance organizations, administrators are reluctant to trust health education to people who are not clinically trained. Nurses and physicians who often conduct health education-or patient education-may lack the aptitude, training, or motivation to do so. Fortunately, most modern nurses take their patient education responsibilities seriously and receive professional preparation in the field. Certainly, health education is best applied by individuals trained to employ its processes.

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