Health education is defined as the principle by which individuals and groups of people learn to behave in a manner conducive to the promotion, maintenance, or restoration of health.Health Education plays a crucial role in the development of a healthy, inclusive, and equitable social, psychological, and physical environment. It has undergone radical change in recent years, and modern approaches now use an empowering, multi-dimensional, multi-professional approach which relates to all settings, organizations, and parts and levels of society, including schools, colleges, the community, and the workplace. This leading edge journal reflects the best of modern thinking about health education, offers stimulating and incisive coverage of current debates, concerns, interventions, and initiatives, and provides a wealth of evidence, research, information, and ideas to inform and inspire those in both the theory and practice of health education.
Health education is the profession of educating people about health. [1] Areas within this profession encompass environmental health, physical health, social health, emotional health, intellectual health, and spiritual health. [2] It can be defined as the principle by which individuals and groups of people learn to behave in a manner conducive to the promotion, maintenance, or restoration of health. However, as there are multiple definitions of health, there are also multiple definitions of health education. The Joint Committee on Health Education and Promotion Terminology of 2001 defined Health Education as "any combination of planned learning experiences based on sound theories that provide individuals, groups, and communities the opportunity to acquire information and the skills needed to make quality health decisions." [3] The World Health Organization defined Health Education as "compris[ing] [of] consciously constructed opportunities for learning involving some form of communication designed to improve health literacy, including improving knowledge, and developing life skills which are conducive to individual and community health." [4]
The Role of the Health Educator
A health educator is “a professionally prepared individual who serves in a variety of roles and is specifically trained to use appropriate educational strategies and methods to facilitate the development of policies, procedures, interventions, and systems conducive to the health of individuals ,groups, and communities” (Joint Committee on Terminology, 2001, p. 100). As a Health Educator you are here to help and enhance the health of others. In wanting to better understand the role of a health educator in January 1979 the Role Delineation Project was put into place. This made a basic role for the health educator. A Framework for the Development of Competency-Based Curricula for Entry Level Health Educators(NCHEC, 1985) and the revised version A Competency-Based Framework for the Professional Development of Certified Health Education Specialists (NCHEC,1996) resulted from the project and these documents made up the framework. Which were made into the seven areas of responsibilities.
Motivation
Education for health begins with people. It hopes to motivate them with whatever interests they may have in improving their living conditions. Its aim is to develop in them a sense of responsibility for health conditions for themselves as individuals, as members of families, and as communities. In communicable disease control, health education commonly includes an appraisal of what is known by a population about a disease, an assessment of habits and attitudes of the people as they relate to spread and frequency of the disease, and the presentation of specific means to remedy observed deficiencies.[5]
Health education is also an effective tool that helps improve health in developing nations. It not only teaches prevention and basic health knowledge but also conditions ideas that re-shape everyday habits of people with unhealthy lifestyles in developing countries. This type of conditioning not only affects the immediate recipients of such education but also future generations will benefit from an improved and properly cultivated ideas about health that will eventually be ingrained with widely spread health education. Moreover, besides physical health prevention, health education can also provide more aid and help people deal healthier with situations of extreme stress, anxiety, depression or other emotional disturbances to lessen the impact of these sorts of mental and emotional constituents, which can consequently lead to detrimental physical effects. [6],
Motivation
Education for health begins with people. It hopes to motivate them with whatever interests they may have in improving their living conditions. Its aim is to develop in them a sense of responsibility for health conditions for themselves as individuals, as members of families, and as communities. In communicable disease control, health education commonly includes an appraisal of what is known by a population about a disease, an assessment of habits and attitudes of the people as they relate to spread and frequency of the disease, and the presentation of specific means to remedy observed deficiencies.[5]
Health education is also an effective tool that helps improve health in developing nations. It not only teaches prevention and basic health knowledge but also conditions ideas that re-shape everyday habits of people with unhealthy lifestyles in developing countries. This type of conditioning not only affects the immediate recipients of such education but also future generations will benefit from an improved and properly cultivated ideas about health that will eventually be ingrained with widely spread health education. Moreover, besides physical health prevention, health education can also provide more aid and help people deal healthier with situations of extreme stress, anxiety, depression or other emotional disturbances to lessen the impact of these sorts of mental and emotional constituents, which can consequently lead to detrimental physical effects. [6],
