Health education

Health education is a profession of educating people about health. Areas within this profession encompass environmental health, physical health, social health, emotional health, intellectual health, and spiritual health, as well as sexual and reproductive health education. It can also be defined as any combination of learning activities that aim to assist individuals and communities improve their health by expanding knowledge or altering attitudes.

Health education has been defined differently by various sources. The National Conference on Preventive Medicine in 1975 defined it as "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." 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 (WHO) defined Health Education as consisting 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."

It is often thought that health education began with the beginning of healthcare in the earliest parts of history as knowledge was passed from generation to generation. Some people might be surprised to hear that health education's roots date back to the Greeks between the sixth and fourth century B.C.E. They shifted their focus away from superstitious and supernatural conceptions of health and toward the physiological causes of ailments, according to documents that have been uncovered. They discussed how physical health, social settings, and human behavior are connected to preventing disease and sustaining good health. The Greeks wanted to empower people and communities by establishing supportive settings and regulations that would promote taking medication and upholding healthy behaviors. They did this by educating people about their health and developing their skills. Other preserved texts from ancient civilizations in China, India, Egypt, Rome, Persia also contain information regarding various diseases, their kinds of treatments, and even preventative measures. The first medical school was later founded at the end of the 8th century in Salerno, Italy and focused a significant portion of its curriculum on proper hygiene and healthy lifestyles. Much later, Johann Guttenberg's printing press paved the way for making educational materials more accessible as some of the first things to be printed were treatises regarding health. Informational materials containing information about hygiene and healthy lifestyle choices became popular as a tool to combat epidemics. In the 19th century, "awareness-rising" began to increase to improve the knowledge of the average people regarding health and other topics. As medicine has continued to progress, with new fields being created to address new problems, so too has methods of providing health education.

Prior to the 1960s, the physician was primarily in charge and the patients were expected to have a passive role in their own health decisions. In 1976, the Patient Education and Counseling journal was founded and the concept of health education began to really take off. It was around this time that it became apparent that if patients are informed about their health, they could improve it through various lifestyle changes. In the 1980s, patient advocacy groups drew attention to the issue of patients' rights such as the right to be informed about health conditions and the potential options for care. The 1990s fully brought about the shared decision making model present in healthcare settings today, including the emergence of electronic health communication. Lastly, in the 21st century, there has been an emergence of associations designated as platforms for promoting health education and communication.

In the United States specifically...

The purpose and approach of health education in the United States have evolved over time. 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. The major recent trend regarding changing definitions of school health education is the increasing acknowledgement that school education influences adult behavior.

In the 1970s, health education was viewed in the U.S. mostly as a means of communicating healthy medical practices to those who should be practicing them. By this time, 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.

In the 1980s definitions began to incorporate the belief that education is a means of empowerment for the individual, allowing them to make educated health decisions. Health education in the U.S. became "the process of assisting individuals... to make informed decisions about matters affecting their personal health and the health of others." This definition emerged in the same year as the first national-scale investigation of health education in schools in the United States, which eventually led to a much more aggressive approach to educating young people on matters of health. In the late 1990s the World Health Organization launched a Global Health Initiative which aimed at developing "health-promoting schools", which would enhance school health programs at all levels including: local, regional, national, and global level.