Health education aims to encourage healthy behaviors and lifestyles. It involves teaching people about their health, how to stay healthy, and how to seek help when needed. The key principles of health education are credibility, interest, participation, motivation, comprehension, reinforcement, learning by doing, starting from known to unknown concepts, setting a good example, building good relationships, and getting feedback. Health education topics include human biology, nutrition, hygiene, disease prevention, mental health, and accident prevention. Methods include audiovisual aids, lectures, demonstrations, discussions, and mass media campaigns. Planning involves assessing community needs, setting goals and objectives, and evaluating outcomes. Governments and organizations play roles in administering health education programs.

1. HEALTH EDUCATION
AKSHAY RAJU BADORE
MPT-COM

2. DEFINITION
• Health education is the translation of what is known about health, into desirable
individual and community behaviour patterns by means of an education process.
• The definition adopted by John M Last is “The process by which individuals and
group of people learn to behave in a manner conductive to the promotion,
maintenance or restoration of health”
• Health education is the part of health care that is concerned with promoting
healthy behaviour.

3. ALMA-ATA DECLARATION (1978)
The Declaration of Alma-Ata (1978) by emphasizing the need for “individual and community
participation” gave a new meaning and direction to the practice of health education.
The dynamic definition of health education is as follows :
“a process aimed at encouraging people to want to be healthy, to know how to stay healthy,
to do what they can individually and collectively to maintain health, and to seek help when
needed”

4. AIMS & OBJECTIVES
• To encourage people to adopt and sustain health promoting lifestyle and practices;
• To promote the proper use of health services available to them;
• To arouse interest, provide new knowledge, improve skills and change attitude in making
rational decision to solve their own problems; and
• Stimulate individual and community self-reliance and participation to achieve health
development through individual and community involvement at every step from
identifying problems to solving them.

5. PRINCIPLES OF HEALTH EDUCATION
Health Education brings together the art and science of medicine & the principles and practice of
general education.
• Credibility - It is the degree to which the message to be communicated his pursued as
trustworthy by the receiver.
• Interest - It is psychological principle that people are unlikely to listen to those things which are
not to their interest. Health educators must find out the real health needs of the people.
Psychologists call them felt needs that is needs the people feel about themselves.
• Participation - Participation is a keyword in health education.
• Motivation - In every person there is fundamental desire to learn, awakening this desire is
called motivation. There are two types of motives primary and secondary. Primary motives (e.g.
sex, hunger, survival) are driving forces initiating people into action; these motives are inborn
desire. Secondary motives are based on desire created by outside forces. Some of the
secondary motives are praise love rivalry rewards and punishment and recognition.

6. • Comprehension - In health education we must know the level of understanding,
education and literacy of people to whom the teaching is directed.
• Reinforcement - If the message is repeated in the different ways, people are more
likely to remember it.
• Learning by doing - Learning is an action - process; not a "memorizing" one. The
Chinese proverb "If I here, I forget; if I see, I remember; if I do, I know" illustrates the
importance of learning by doing.
• Known to Unknown - Starting with what people understand and then proceed to
unknown knowledge.
• Setting an example - The health educator should set a good example in the things he is
teaching.
• Good Human Relations - Sharing of information, ideas and feelings happen most easily
between people who have a good relationship.
• Feedback - It is one of the key concepts of the systems approach.
• Leaders - In the work of health education, we try to penetrate the community through
the local leaders the village admin the school teacher or the political worker.

7. CONTENTS OF HEALTH EDUCATION
• Human biology- Understanding health, demands an understanding of the human biology,
i.e., the structure and functions of the body; how to keep physically fit - the need for
exercise, rest and sleep; the effects of alcohol, smoking and drugs on the body;
cultivation of healthy lifestyles, etc.
• Nutrition - The aim of nutrition education is to guide people to choose optimum and
balanced diets, remove prejudices and promote good directory habits.
• Hygiene - This has two aspects - personal and environment. The aim of personal hygiene
is to promote standards of personal cleanliness within the setting of the condition where
people live. Personal hygiene includes bathing, clothing, washing, care of nails, feet and
teeth etc. Environmental hygiene has two aspects - domestic and community. Domestic
hygiene comprises that of the home, use of soap, need for fresh air, light and ventilation
etc. In the developing countries, the emphasis is on the improvement of basic sanitary
services consisting of water supply, disposal of human excreta, other solid and liquid
wastes, vector control, food sanitation and housing which are fundamental to health.

8. • Family Health - The family is the first defence, as well as the chief reliance for the well being
of its member.
• Disease Prevention and Control - Education of the people about the prevention and control
of locally endemic diseases is the first of 8 essential activities in primary health care.
• Mental Health - The aim of education in mental health is to help people to keep mentally
healthy and to prevent a mental breakdown.
• Prevention of Accidents - Accidents occur in three main areas : the home, road and the
place of work. Safety education should be directed to these areas. It should be the concern
of the engineering department and also the responsibility of the police department to
enforce rules of road safety.
• Use of Health Services - Many people particularly in rural areas do not know what health
services are available in the community. Studies indicate that the public attitude towards
health services is still apprehensive. There is a communication gap between the public and
the state health administration in the form of feedback for the improvement of health
services.

9. PRACTICE OF HEALTH EDUCATION
Educational material should be designed to focus attention to provide new knowledge, to
facilitate interpersonal and group discussion and to reinforce or clarify prior knowledge and
behaviour.
(A) Audio-visual aids - No health education can be effective without audio visual aids. They
help to simplify unfamiliar concepts; bring about understanding where words fail; reinforce
learning by appealing to more than one sense, and provide a dynamic way of avoiding
monotony.
 Auditory Aids- Radio, tape-recorder, microphones, amplifiers, earphones.
 Visual Aids –
(a) Not requiring projection - chalkboard, leaflets posters, charts, exhibits, models. specimens
etc.
(b) Requiring projection - slides, film strips.
 Combined A-V AIDS - television, sound films, slide-tape combination.

10. (B) Methods in health communication –
The methods in health communication may be grouped as –
1. Individual Approach
 Personal Contact
 Home Visits
 Personal Letters
2. Group Approach
 Lectures
 Demonstrations
 Discussion Methods – Group Discussion, Panel Discussion, Symposium, Workshop, Conferences,
Seminars, Role Play
3. Mass approach
 Television
 Radio
 News Paper
 Printed Materials
 Direct Mailing
 Posters
 Health Museums and Exhibitions
 Folk Methods
 Internet

11. PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT
The specifies of a health education strategy in a local community have to be formulated in
accordance with its socio-cultural, psycho-social, political, economic and situational
characteristics.
Health education planning follows the main steps in scientific planning, which are :
• Collecting information on specific problems as seen by the community
• Identification of the problem
• Deciding on priorities
• Setting goals and measurable objectives
• Assessment of resources
• Consideration of possible solutions
• Preparation of a plan of action : what will be done? when? by whom?
• Implementing the plan
• Monitoring and evaluating the degree to which stated objectives have been achieved
• Reassessment of the process of planning. Planning and evaluation are essential for effect
to health education.

12. ADMINISTRATION AND ORGANIZATION
• Governments have a responsibility for assisting and guiding the health education of the
general public. At the national level the, Government of India in 1956 established a Central
Health Education Bureau in the Ministry of Health, New Delhi to promote and co-ordinate
health education work in the country. Many state governments in India have now Health
Education Bureaux in their Health Directorate.
• There are also other official agencies in the country such as the Directorate of Advertising
and Visual Publicity (DAVP), Press Information Bureau, Doordarshan and All India Radio
which are active in health education work.
• A new division of Health Education and Health Promotion has been established by the
WHO. The division will support regional offices of WHO in strengthening national
capabilities in health education and promotion, and develop and test new ideas and tools.
• Health education is a complex activity in which different individuals and organisations play
a part. Among them are parents, teachers, friends, physicians, nurses, health workers and
various organisations governmental and non governmental.

13. THE ONLY THING MORE EXPENSIVE
THAN EDUCATION IS IGNORANCE…
THANK YOU