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Health education is the profession of educating people about
health. Areas within this profession encompass environmental
health, physical health, social health, emotional health,
intellectual health, and spiritual health. 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." The World Health Organization
defined Health Education as comprising 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.
The Role of the Health Educator
From the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, the aim
of public health was controlling the harm from infectious
diseases, which were largely under control by the 1950s. By the
mid 1970s it was clear that reducing illness, death, and rising
health care costs could best be achieved through a focus on
health promotion and disease prevention. At the heart of the new
approach was the role of a 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.
In January 1978 the Role Delineation Project was put into place,
in order to define the basic roles and responsibilities for the
health educator. The result was a Framework for the Development
of Competency-Based Curricula for Entry Level Health Educators (NCHEC,
1985). A second result was a revised version of A
Competency-Based Framework for the Professional Development of
Certified Health Education Specialists (NCHEC,1996). These
documents outlined the seven areas of responsibilities which are
shown below.
Responsibility I: Assessing Individual and Community Needs for
Health Education
* Provides the foundation for program planning
* Determines what health problems might exist in any given group
* Includes determination of community resources available to
address the problem
* Community Empowerment encourages the population to take
ownership of their health problems
* Includes careful data collection and analysis
Responsibility II: Plan Health Education Strategies,
Interventions, and Programs
* Actions are based on the needs assessment done for the
community (see Responsibility I)
* Involves the development of goals and objectives which are
specific and measurable
* Interventions are developed that will meet the goals and
objectives
* According to Rule of Sufficiency, strategies are implemented
which are sufficiently
robust, effective enough, and have a reasonable chance of
meeting stated objectives
Responsibility III: Implement Health Education Strategies,
Interventions, and Programs
* Implementation is based on a thorough understanding of the
priority population
* Utilize a wide range of educational methods and techniques
Responsibility IV: Conduct Evaluation and Research Related to
Health Education
* Depending on the setting, utilize tests, surveys,
observations, tracking epidemiological
data, or other methods of data collection
* Health Educators make use of research to improve their
practice
Responsibility V: Administer Health Education Strategies,
Interventions, and Programs
* Administration is generally a function of the more experienced
practitioner
* Involves facilitating cooperation among personnel, both within
and between programs
Responsibility VI: Serve as a Health Education Resource Person
* Involves skills to access needed resources, and establish
effective consultive relationships
Responsibility VII: Communicate and Advocate for Health and
Health Education
* Translates scientific language into understandable information
* Address diverse audience in diverse settings
* Formulates and support rules, policies and legislation
* Advocate for the profession of health education
