Health education

 Health education: theoretical concepts, effective strategies and core competencies

The mandate of most health education, public health, and chronic disease management programmes is to help people maintain and improve their health, reduce disease risks, and manage chronic illness. (21) Ultimately the goal is to improve the well-being and self-sufficiency of individuals, families, organizations, and communities. Often this will require behaviour change at every level. 

How are health behaviour theories useful?

A health behaviour theory offers a number of benefits and can be seen: (21)

 • as a toolbox for moving beyond intuition to designing and evaluating health education interventions that are based on an understanding of why people engage in certain health behaviour; 

• as a foundation for programme planning and development that is consistent with the current emphasis on using evidence-based interventions;

 • as a road map for studying problems, developing appropriate interventions, identifying indicators and evaluating impacts; 

• as a guide to help explain the processes for changing health behaviour and the influences of the many forces that affect it, including social and physical environments; • as a compass to help planners identify the most suitable target audiences, methods for fostering change and outcomes for evaluation

 
The rational model 
Within this model education strategies target individuals and groups and strive to encourage positive and prevent negative health behaviour choices. This is done by presenting relatively unbiased information. This model, also known as the knowledge, attitudes, practices model (KAP), is based on the premise that increasing a person’s knowledge will prompt a behaviour change. It assumes that the only obstacle to acting “responsibly” and rationally is ignorance, and that information alone can influence behaviour by “correcting” this lack of knowledge:


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