Health education is the learning process by which persons and groups learn to promote, maintain, or restore health. Health education must be adjusted to learning levels and directed to situations of immediate interest for the particular age group. For example, a 10-year-old boy is more concerned with increasing his muscular prowess with proper food and exercise, while the 16-year-old boy is concerned with effects of smoking, drugs, and alcohol consumption. Adults are increasingly concerned about the effects of stress, pollutants, smoking, and drugs on long-term health.
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As a health educator, you must learn about the health and health needs of each person by determining his knowledge, attitudes, and practices related to personal health promotion, his plans for health protection, and his present mental and emotional health status. All of these points must be considered before the actual planning and during implementation of any health education program.
You also play an important part in health education by promoting local and state control of infection and disease through mass screening or immunization and by supporting and promoting community projects for improved housing, adequate sanitation facilities, vermin control, slum clearance, and control of leaded paint and gasoline.
Teaching parents about child care, nutrition, normal patterns of development, how to manage given budgetary and other limitations, and realistic expectations for themselves and their children can promote adaptation to the ordinary stresses of family living and childreasing. Helping parents to feel “good” or positive about themselves and their children is basic to any teaching. By promoting the adaptive capacities of parents, you can help prevent child abuse. All of the above are interrelated to enhancethe health-physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially-of the person and the family, and thereby, the community.
The remainder of this text will explore in greater depth the information that you can use to promote the well-being of yourself and of others in a pluralistic society-a society containing groups of people distinctive in environmental setting, ethnic origins, sociocultural patterns, and religion. Information about developmental norms that will assist you in understanding people in a pluralistic society is also available.
The remainder of this text will explore in greater depth the information that you can use to promote the well-being of yourself and of others in a pluralistic society-a society containing groups of people distinctive in environmental setting, ethnic origins, sociocultural patterns, and religion. Information about developmental norms that will assist you in understanding people in a pluralistic society is also available.
References :
Murray, Ruth, and Judith Zentner, Nursing Assessment and Health Promotion Through the Life Span, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, Inc.,1970.
Murray, RB and Zentner JP., Nursing Concepts for Health Promotion, Second Edtion, Prentice-Hall, Inc, Englewood Cliffs, N.J, 1979.
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