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Lecture 4
BS (Hons) MLT
6th Semester
Instructor:
Muhammad Adeel
What is Health Education
 Health Education is a process that informs,
motivates, and helps people to adopt and
maintain healthy practices and lifestyles,
advocates environmental changes as needed
to facilitate this goal and conducts
professional training and research to the same
end.

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Cont..
“Health education is the
process by which individuals
and group of people learn to “:
 Promote
 Maintain
 Restore health.

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Health Promotion
 “Process of enabling people to increase control
over and to improve their health”.
 Health education, an integral part of health
promotion.

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Health Promotion action
Requires: Health education Preventive health
programmes services(Primary,
secondary, tertiary
Economic and
regulatory
activities
AREAS OF
Community-based
HEALTH
work
PROMOTION
ACTIVITIES

Creating Supportive
environment
Reorienting health
Healthy services
Public Policy

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Who is responsible for
health education?
 Process of educating and getting educated
starts at birth and ends at death
 In childhood: responsibility of parents and
other elders
 Grown up child: responsibility extends from
family to social environment
 Adolescent: responsible for others

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Aim of Health Education
 To produce positive behavior changes in
individuals and communities.
 To enables people to take control over their
health and over factors affecting health such
as personal, social and environmental
 Self empowerment

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Stages of health education
 Sensitization
 Publicity
 Education
 Attitude change
 Motivation & action
 Social change

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Cont..
 Stage of Sensitization: People are
sensitized regarding an emerging issue
through positive health message.
 Stage of Publicity: Media and all the
possible means of advertisements are used
for informing people regarding the issue.

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Cont..
 Stage of Education: Health education is
provided to the communities with emphasis
on illiterate and disinterested people through
the leaders and influential personalities of
their own communities such as Imam, vadera
and schoolmaster.
 Main aim of health education here: to
prevent the spread of disease and improve
general health of communities

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Cont..
 Stage of Attitude Change: As a result of health
education and motivation, actions in the direction
of positive behaviors changes the attitude of the
people towards their own good health changes.
 Stage of Motivation & Action: Persuasion of
the people to eventually act for the betterment of
their own health. Once motivation is provided and
actions in the right direction starts, it further
motivates the individuals and families to continue
such behavior.

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Cont..
 Stage of Community Transformation
(Social Change): After all the above stages
have been successfully completed, the whole
community transformed into a healthy
community.

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Strategies of Health
Education
 Communication: A two-way process that
starts with the sender and ends with the
receiver.

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Sender:
Qualities of an effective sender:
1. Clear
2. Confident
3. Creditable
4. Concepts clear
5. Concise message

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Message
 Simple, concise and focused
 Components of message:
a. Data
b. Warrant
c. claim

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Channel
 A medium for transmitting message.
 Can at individual level or community level
 Examples of channels:
 Print media: newspapers, newsletters,
posters, pamphlets
 Audiovisual: films and videos
 Verbal: one on one or session with group
 Mass media: TV, radio

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Receiver
 Decodes the message and if likes the
message, then try to make changes in the
behavior.
 Receiver responds to the message by giving a
feedback to the sender.
 Feedback, an integral component of
Communication process.
 Because if the receiver did not understand the
message, sender will use another medium fro
sending the same message.
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Communication Barriers
 Social and cultural gap between the sender
and receiver
 Negative attitude of the sender
 Limited receptiveness of receiver
 Insufficient emphasis by the sender
 Contradictory messages

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Models of Behavior Change
 Mode 1:
 Health consciousness
 Knowledge
 self awareness
 Attitude change
 Decision making
 Behavior change
 Social change

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Model 2
 AIETA model
 Awareness
 Interest
 Evaluation
 Trial
 Adoption

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Methods of maintaining
behavior change
1. Support groups
2. Positive reinforcement
3. Negative reinforcement

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Foundations of Health
Education
 Psychology, sociology and anthropology
 Their roles in health education are:
 Psychology: to understand the process of
cognition, learning an attitude development
 Sociology: Mechanism of social learning and
social change
 Anthropology: customs, taboos and social
environment of consumer community

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Cont..
 2. Formal and Informal education:
 Formal education: deals with classroom
teaching and not very suitable for health
education
 Informal education: very helpful as it is
related to environment personal experiences
 3. Public Health: Very important to learn the
tools of public health i.e., biostatistics,
epidemiology and health education methods
etc for designing, implementing and
evaluating health education programmes.
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Health Education in Pakistan
 At federal level: Ministry of Health:
responsible for developing and executing
health education campaigns.
 At provincial level: special cells responsible for
provision of health educators to the major
colleges in the province.
 Teaching hospitals have at least one health
educator.

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Program planning for health
education
 Goals
 Objectives
 Resources and constraints
 Method
 implementation plan
 Evaluation

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Hospital based health
education
 Hospitals now have an obligation to promote
organize, implement and evaluate health
education activities.
 Benefits:
 General awareness regarding early diagnosis and
treatment
 Better communication between health care
professionals and community
 Community support
 Continued education after hospitalization to
prevent readmission in future
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Reference:
 Chapter 29 health education and promotion
from text book of community medicine

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Thank you

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