PRINCIPLES OF HEALTH EDUCATION, INTRODUCTION, DEFINITION, AIM, PRACTICE OF HEALTH EDUCATION, INDIVIDUAL APPROACH, GROUP APPROACH, MASS APPROACH, CREDIBILITY, MOTIVATION, INTEREST, PARTICIPATION, REINFORCEMENT, COMPREHENSION, FEEDBACK, KNOWN TO UNKNOWN, LEARNING BY DOING, SETTING AN EXAMPLE, GOOD HUMAN RELATIONS, LEADER.

1. PRINCIPLES
OF
HEALTH EDUCATION
Dr.Sunayana Kumthekar
Assistant Professor
dept. of Community Medicine
SBHGMC DHULE

2. INTRODUCTION
• Health education is one of the functions of
health communication
• Health communication often used
synonymously with health education
• It is foundation of preventive health care
system.

3. DEFINITION
“A process aimed at encouraging people to
want to be healthy, to know how to stay
healthy, to do what they can
Individually and
collectively to maintain
health and to seek help when needed”

4. AIMS OF HEALTH EDUCATION
• The ultimate aim of Health Education is Positive
Behavioral Modification
• Health education knowledge
behavior attitude
change

5. Practice of Health Ed’n
1.Audiovisual aids
- Auditory: radio, tape recorder, microphone, amplifier,
earphone
- Visual: two types
i) without projection: chalk-board, leaflets, posters, charts,
flannel
ii) with projection: slides, filmstrips
- Combined: television, cinema, slide tape combination

6. INDIVIDUALAPPROACH
• Personal contact
• Home visits
• Personal letters

7. GROUP APPROACH
• Chalk and talk
• Demonstrations
• Group discussion
• Panel discussion
• Symposium
• Workshop
• Role playing
• Conferences and
• seminars

8. MASS APPROACH
• Television
• Radio
• Internet
• Newspaper
• Printed materials
• Direct mailing
• Posters, signs,
billboards
• Health
exhibitions
• Folk media

9. Principles of health education:
CREDIBILITY: message to be communicated
is perceived as trustworthy by the receiver.
Good health education –
consistent
compatible with scientific knowledge, local
culture, education system and social goals.

10. EXAMPLES
CHIKUNGUNYA , DENGUE
• Stagnant water – breeding places for
mosquitoes.
• Educating about clean surroundings;
DIARRHOEAL DISEASES
• Source: Contaminated water
• Educate about boiling of water.

11.  MOTIVATION: defined at its simplest,
involves
• inducing individuals to behave in desired
and
• predetermined patterns.
• Types,
endogenous
exogenous.
motivation is contagious.

12. EXAMPLE
• Mothers are
being motivated
postnatal to
follow family
planning in
order to
preserve the
small family
norm.

13. EXAMPLE
• People coming to
the local camps
conducted by the
trained workers for
their health
problems.

14. INTEREST: health teaching should relate to
the interests of the people.
‘FELT NEEDS’ i.e. needs the people feel
about themselves.
People gladly participate in such
programmes.
EXAMPLE: HIV Counseling

15.  PARTICIPATION: The aim is to encourage
the people to work actively in identifying
their problems,
• Developing solutions and plans to work on
them.
• A high degree of participation tends to
create a sense of involvement, personal
acceptance and
decision making.

16. People participating in health
developmental program

17. EXAMPLE
• Diarrhea epidemic in the
community
• Community participation in
eliminating the source.

18. REINFORCEMENT: repetition at
intervals is
• necessary as there is every possibility of an
individual going back to the pre
awareness stage.
• People are more likely to remember when
message is repeated in different ways.

19. EXAMPLES
• SMOKING IS INJURIOUS TO HEALTH.

20. EXAMPLE
• HIV-AIDS

21. COMPREHENSION: communicating with people
in their own language and with in their mental
capacity is always helpful.

22. FEED BACK: The health educator
can modify the elements of the
system in the light of feedback from
his audience.

23. KNOWN TO UNKNOWN:
Existing knowledge to new knowledge
• Simple to complicated
• Easy to difficult

24. Overeating
Obesity
Hypertension
Atherosclerosis
Coronary Artery Disease

25. LEARNING BY DOING: a Chinese
proverb quotes
• ‘if I hear I forget, if I see I remember, if I do
I know’,
• illustrates the importance of learning by
doing.

26.  SETTING AN EXAMPLE: The health
educator should set a good example in
the things he is teaching.
The health educator should not
have the habit of smoking when
propagating about the ill effects
of smoking.

27. GOOD HUMAN RELATIONS:
As sharing of information, ideas and feelings
happens most easily between people who have a
good relationship.

28. LEADERS: In work of health education, we try
to
• penetrate the community through the local
leaders –
• the village headman, school teachers or political
workers who can reach the public more easily.