Definition of Health Education
Health Education
comprises 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.
Health education is not only concerned with the communication of
information, but also with fostering the motivation, skills and
confidence (self-efficacy) necessary to take action to improve health.
Health education includes the communication of information concerning
the underlying social, economic and environmental conditions impacting
on health, as well as individual risk factors and risk behaviors, and
use of the health care system. Thus, health education may involve the
communication of information, and development of skills which
demonstrates the political feasibility and organizational possibilities
of various forms of action to address social, economic and environmental
determinants of health.
In the past, health education was used as a term to encompass a wider
range of actions including social mobilization and advocacy. These
methods are now encompassed in the term health promotion, and a more narrow definition of health education is proposed here to emphasize the distinction.
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