Health education and health promotion
Health education is one of the most important components of health promotion. It is a means of promoting health. Health education provides consciousness-raising, concern-arousing, action stimulating impetus for public involvement and commitment to social reform essential to its success.
Health promotion emerges out of health education. Without health education, health promotion cannot be achieved. Health promotion aimed at the social and political action that will facilitate the necessary organisational, economical and other environmental supports for the conversion of individual action into health enhancement. Some other components of health promotion activities are health education, advocacy, community participation community mobilisation community conversation, social marking, etc.
Health education is often powerless to help people to reach their health goals, even with successful individual change efforts. Therefore health promotion is a structural (laws, regulation, organisational...) support for health education to develop its full potential /maintained for a long period. Some examples include vaccinating children, implementing nutritional interventions, distributing ITNs at the community level and destroying places favourable for the breeding of mosquitoes (See table, below).
Examples of Health Education and Health Promotion Activities
| Cases /disease | Health education activities | Health promotion activities |
|---|---|---|
| HIV/AIDS | Making counselling service available Distributing of condoms Increasing VCT services Setting up peer education program Enforcing of legal protection of sex workers and injecting users |
Educating general public and specific groups such as drivers , sex workers, youth, on safe sexual behaviours. |
| Malaria | Educating the public about malaria prevention, ITN and early treatment of cases. | Increasing curative service Creating supportive environment by distributing ITNs in malaria sites. |
| Tobacco | Educating the public focusing on health problems related with smoking such as lung cancer through different media. Educating the public not to start smoking and to persuade smokers to stop. | Control of tobacco advertising Increase taxes on price of cigarettes Prohibiting smoking in public areas. |