HEALTH EDUCATION  

STEP 3: IDENTIFY GOALS, POPULATIONS OF INTEREST,

Module 1 - Introduction to Health Education OUTCOMES, AND OUTCOME OBJECTIVES Purpose: to use
situational assessment results to determine goals, populations
 Health education is a social science that draws from the of interest, outcomes, and outcome objectives. Ensure
biological, environmental, psychological, physical, and program goals, populations of interest, and outcome
medical sciences to promote health and prevent disease, objectives are aligned with strategic directions of your
disability, and premature death through education- organization or group:
driven voluntary behavior change activities.  goal: a broad statement providing overall direction for a
 Health education is the development of an individual, program over a long period of time.
group, institutional, community, and systemic strategies  population(s) of interest: group or groups that require
to improve health knowledge, attitudes, skills, and special attention to achieve your goal
behavior.  outcome objective: brief statement specifying the desired
 The purpose of health education is to positively influence change caused by the program
individuals and communities' health behavior and the  
living and working conditions that influence their health. STEP 4: IDENTIFY STRATEGIES, ACTIVITIES, OUTPUTS, PROCESS
OBJECTIVES, AND RESOURCES Purpose: to use the results of
 HEALTH EDUCATION IS THE PROCESS OF PASSING ON the situational assessment to select strategies and activities,
HEALTH MESSAGES WITH THE AIM OF INFLUENCING feasible with available resources, that will contribute to your
PEOPLES’ BEHAVIOURS, ATTITUDES AND PRACTICES. goals and outcome objectives. Brainstorm strategies (e.g.
 HEALTH PROMOTION IS THE EFFORT BY THE health education, health communication, organizational
GOVERNMENT OR OTHER SERVICE PROVIDERS TO BUILD change, policy development) for achieving objectives using
CAPACITY OF THE COMMUNITY TO TAKE CONTROL OF one or more health promotion frameworks such as the Ottawa
THEIR HEALTH. Charter for Health Promotion or the socioecological model.
  Prioritize ideas by applying situational assessment results.
IMPORTANCE OF HEALTH EDUCATION Identify specific activities for each strategy, including which
existing activities to start, stop, and continue. Select outputs
 Health education improves the health status of and develop process objectives. Consider available financial,
individuals, families, communities, states, and the human and in‐kind resources.
nation.  
 Health education enhances the quality of life for all STEP 5: DEVELOP INDICATORS Purpose: to develop a list of
people. variables that can be tracked to assess the extent to which
 Health education reduces premature deaths. outcome and process objectives have been met. For each
 By focusing on prevention, health education reduces the outcome and process, the objective considers the intended
costs (both financial and human) that individuals, result and whether: the intended result can be divided into
employers, families, insurance companies, medical separate components; the intended result can be measured;
facilities, communities, the state, and the nation would there is an appropriate time for observing a result; required
spend on medical treatment. data sources are accessible, and the resources needed to
assess the result are available. Define indicators to measure
PROCESS OF HEALTH EDUCATION each outcome and process objective and perform a quality
check on proposed indicators ensuring they are valid, reliable,
STEP 1: MANAGE THE PLANNING PROCESS Purpose: to and accessible. Indicators are used to determine the extent to
develop a plan to manage stakeholder participation, timelines, which outcomes and process objectives were met.
resources, and determine methods for data-gathering,  
interpretation, and decision making. Plan to engage STEP 6: REVIEW THE PROGRAM PLAN Purpose: to clarify the
stakeholders, including clients and staff, in a meaningful way. contribution of each component of the plan to its objectives,
Establish a clear timeline for creating a work plan. Plan how identify gaps, ensure adequate resources, and ensure
you will allocate financial, material, and human resources. consistency with the situational assessment findings. A logic
Consider the data required to make decisions at each step and model is a graphic depiction of the relationship between all
include adequate data collection and interpretation time. parts of a program (i.e., goals, objectives, populations,
Establish a clear decision‐making process. (e.g., by consensus, strategies, and activities) and is one way in which a program
by committee) overview can be communicated. Review the plan to determine
  whether: strategies effectively contribute to goals and
STEP 2: CONDUCT A SITUATIONAL ASSESSMENT Purpose: to objectives; short-term objectives contribute to long-term
learn more about the population of interest, trends, and issues objectives; the best activities were chosen to advance the
that may affect implementation, including the wants, needs, strategy; activities are appropriate to the audiences, and the
and assets of the community. This step involves identifying: resources are adequate to implement the activities.
what is the situation; what is making the situation better and
what is making it worse; and what possible actions you can
take to address the situation. Use diverse types of data (e.g.
community health status indicators, stories/testimonials;
evaluation findings; “best practice” guidelines), sources of
data (e.g. polling companies; community/partner
organizations; researchers; governments; private sector); and
data collection methods (e.g. stakeholder interviews or focus
groups; surveys; literature reviews; review of past evaluation EXAMPLES OF HEALTH EDUCATION AND HEALTH PROMOTION
findings or stakeholder mandates/policies). HEALTH EDUCATION
  Radio H/E programs • In health, one must know the level of understanding of
 Drama shows the targeted people.
 Film show • Thus, the teaching must be within the mental capacity of
 Person to person the target group.
 Posters, books & magazines(IEC materials)
 Mobile audio systems/P.A system REINFORCEMENT
 T.V  Few people can learn and adopt new ideas for the first
 Newspapers time.
HEALTH PROMOTION  Repetition at intervals is extremely useful. It assists
 Home improvement campaigns comprehension and understanding. Therefore, health
 Selection and training VHT’S instruction needs reinforcement(repetitive support and
 Family health days inducement).
 Home visiting programmes
 Health counselling MOTIVATION
 Provision of safe water sources • In every person, there is a fundamental desire to learn.
• Awakening of this desire is called motivation. There are
IMPORTANCE OF HEALTH EDUCATION two types of motives; primary & secondary.
 To create awareness on health issues. • Primary motives are; sex, hunger, survival, which initiate
 To prevent disease occurrence in the community. people into action. These motives are inborn desires.
 To make community aware of the available health • Secondary motives are based on desires created by the
services. outside forces or incentive. These include; praise, love,
 To make health workers aware of the health needs and rivalry, rewards, punishment & recognition.
health problems of the community. • In Health Education, motivation is an imperfect factor.
 It builds skills of the community/individuals to manage The incentives may be positive or negative, but the
their health problems. positive must be emphasized against the negative.

Principles of Health Education KNOWN TO UNKNOWN

These are the building blocks or pillars of H/E. • For imparting Health Education, one should proceed
They include; from the known to the unknown.
o Interest • One should start from where people are i.e. with what
o Participation; learning by doing. they understand, then proceed with new knowledge.
o Comprehension • The existing knowledge of the people should be used as
o Reinforcement pegs on which to hang new knowledge.
o Motivation
Known to Unknown (Surbhi 2011) Seven key roles of Health Educators
http://www.preservearticles.com/Principles -of-health-  Implement Health Education strategies, interventions
education.html and programmes.
 Communicate and advocate for health & Health
INTEREST Education.
 People do not listen to those things which are not of  Conduct evaluation and research related Health
their interest. Education.
 People are not interested in health slogans such as “Take  Serve as a Health Education resource person.
Care Of Your Health”, “Be Healthy”, “Be Clean”, etc.  Assess individual and community needs for Health
 Therefore Health Educators must find out the real needs Education.
of the people.  Plan Health Education strategies, interventions and
 Health Educators must identify the felt needs of the programmes.
people & should be able to address them.
 Where the need/demand is not felt, the Health Educator
should create it.

PARTICIPATION
• Participation is based on the psychological principle that
Module 2: Principles and Theories in Teaching and Learning
group learning, group discussion provide opportunities
for active learning. THE RATIONAL MODEL
• Health Education must involve social participation where  This model, also known as the “knowledge, attitudes,
people are active participants rather than active listeners
practices model” (KAP), is based on the premise that
or spectators. increasing a person’s knowledge will prompt a behaviour
• Learning is an action process, not a “memorizing “ one in
change.
the narrow sense. “If I hear, I forget, if I see, I remember,
if I do, I know”, so health habits should be cultivated in
THE HEALTH BELIEF MODEL
practice.
 One of the earliest behaviour change models to explain
human health decision-making and subsequent
behaviour is based on the following six constructs:
perceived susceptibility, severity, benefits and barriers,
cues to action and self-efficacy.
COMPREHENSION
The extended parallel process model Participant involvement
 Based on the health belief model, this model proposes  Community members should be involved in all phases of
that people, when presented with a risk message, a programme’s development: identifying community
engage in two appraisal processes: a determination of needs, enlisting the aid of community organizations,
whether they are susceptible to an identified threat and planning and implementing programme activities, and
whether the threat is severe; and whether the evaluating results.
recommended action can reduce that threat (i.e.
response efficacy) and whether they can successfully Planning
perform the recommended action (i.e. self-efficacy).  This involves identifying the health problems in the
community that are preventable through community
The transtheoretical model of change intervention, formulating goals, identifying target
 Behaviour change is viewed as a progression through a behaviour andenvironmental characteristics that will be
series of five stages: pre-contemplation, contemplation, the focus of the intervention efforts, deciding how
preparation, action and maintenance. People have stakeholders will be involved, and building a cohesive
specific informational needs at each stage, and health planning group.
educators can offer the most effective intervention
strategies based on the recipients’ stage of change. Needs and resources assessment
 Prior to implementing a health education initiative,
The theory of planned behaviour attention needs to be given to identifying the health
 The theory holds that intent is influenced not only by the needs and capacities of the community and the
attitude towards behaviour but also the perception of resources that are available.
social norms (the strength of others’ opinions on the
behaviour and a person’s own motivation to comply with A comprehensive programme
those of significant others) and the degree of perceived  The programmes with the greatest promise are
behavioural control. comprehensive, in that they deal with multiple risk
factors, use several different channels of programme
The activated health education model delivery, target several different levels (individuals,
 This is a three-phase model that actively engages families, social networks, organizations, the community
individuals in the assessment of their health (experiential as a whole) and are designed to change not only risk
phase); presents information and creates awareness of behaviour but also the factors and conditions that
the target behaviour (awareness phase); and facilitates sustain this behaviour (e.g. motivation, social
its identification and clarification of personal health environment).
values and develops a customized plan for behaviour
change (responsibility phase). An integrated programme
 A programme should be integrated: each component of
Social cognitive theory the programme should reinforce the other components.
 According to this theory, three main factors affect the Programmes should also be physically integrated into
likelihood that a person will change health behaviour: the settings where people live their lives (e.g. worksites).
self-efficacy, goals and outcome expectancies. If
individuals have a sense of self-efficacy, they can change Long-term change
behaviour even when faced with obstacles.  Health education programmes should be designed to
produce stable and lasting changes in health behaviour.
Communication theory This requires longer-term funding of programmes and
 This theory holds that multilevel strategies are necessary the development of a permanent health education
depending on who is being targeted, such as tailored infrastructure within the community.
messages at the individual level, targeted messages at
the group level, social marketing at the community level, Altering community norms
media advocacy at the policy level and mass media  In order to have a significant impact on an entire
campaigns at the population level. organization or community, a health education
programme must be able to alter community or
organizational norms and standards of behaviour. This
Diffusion of innovation theory requires that a substantial proportion of the
 This theory holds that there are five categories of community’s or organization’s members be exposed to
people: innovators, early adopters, early majority programme messages or, preferably, be involved in
adopters, late majority adopters and laggards; and the programme activities in some way.
numbers in each category are distributed normally: the
classic bell curve. By identifying the characteristics of Research and evaluation
people in each adopter category, health educators can  A comprehensive evaluation and research process is
more effectively plan and implement strategies that are necessary, not only to document programme outcomes
customized to their needs. and effects, but to describe its formation and process
and its cost-effectiveness and benefits
The following methods have stood the test of time and appear
to be essential components of health education programmes
and services aimed at enhancing an individual’s and a
community’s health.