Different Methods of Health Education

What is Health Education?

Health education refers to the dissemination of health information and messages to the individuals and communities.
According to World Health Organization (WHO), health education is “any combination of learning experiences designed to help individuals and communities improve their health, by increasing their knowledge or influencing their attitudes.”
Health education is a critical aspect which uncovers the ways to improve health and well-being of the individuals through information dissemination.
Health education empowers people with change in their knowledge, attitude and skills to make informed decisions.
It includes planned learning activities which focuses on health promotion, disease prevention and behavior change.

Objectives of Health Education

To promote healthy behaviors
To improve health literacy among the people, communities and societies
To prevent and protect from diseases
To improve the quality of life of people
To improve capacity and awareness among people regarding healthy behaviors
To enhance knowledge, skill and attitude of the people
To increase compliance on the use of health services and health facilities
To reduce morbidity and mortality associated with the disease and health risk factors

Principles of Health Education

Community participation (when targeted to the communities)
Individual participation in the learning process
Contextual and relevant content
Reinforcement of health messages and key takeaways
Trust and rapport building with the community people
Practical demonstration, simulation and roleplays
Regular assessment and improvement through participant’s feedback

Importance of Health Education

Promotes healthy behavior and healthy lifestyles
Prevents the spread of disease
Strengthens community participation
Empowers the community and boosts up their togetherness
Prepares the community for health emergencies and disasters

Different Approaches of Health Education

1. Individual Approach

Focuses on one-to-one communication
E.g.: Counselling, interview, home visits, phone consultation

Advantages:

Personal attention and support
Increased trust and rapport building
In-depth conversation

Limitations:

Time-consuming

2. Group Approach

Group methods involve providing health education to a certain group of people at a single time.
g.: Demonstration, group discussion, buzzes session, field trip, workshop, symposium, mini-lecture, brainstorming, interview forum, and role-play.

Advantages:

Economical and efficient
Fosters interaction and peer learning among the members of the group
Suitable for Social Behavior Change Communication (SBCC)

Limitations:

Individual needs are not addressed or prioritized
Requires facilitation skills

3. Mass Approach

Mass methods of health education refer to providing health education to larger mass of people through mass media and public campaigns.
g.: Exhibition, advertisement, film shows, mass speeches, miking, radio broadcasting, and television telecast, newspaper, poster, leaflets and brochures.

Advantages:

Wide coverage
Cost effective
Useful during emergency, emergencies and pandemics like COVID-19

Limitations:

Less personalized and not useful for everyone.

Different Methods of Health Education

1. Counselling

Counseling is the procedure of face-to-face communication among counselor, and individual or team or a group where the counselor delivers info and assist the individual, team or group to make a judgment about conduct amendment.
It also helps to inspire and aid an individual or couple in detecting their difficulty.

Methods of Counselling

Building rapport
Ascertaining clienteles’ necessity or complications
The counselor should support the client in finding means to answer the problem by boosting in the discussion.
Sustaining endurance
Retain secret
Return/follow up

2. Group Discussion

Group discussion is also used frequently in training masses of people about how to detect their health complications and observe means and methods to disentangle the health complications.

Process of Group Discussion

Update group members about interval, residence, and theme of discussion
Confirm room/place for group discussion
Familiarize the nature and objective of the session
Create a ground rule
Reassure discussion
Review discussion
Make a decision centered on group agreement

Advantages

Members of the group get opportunity to be familiar with each other
Offers suitable communication surrounded by all the members
Health educator categorizes the difficulties of the members and comfort them to solve.

Disadvantages

It might take extensive time to come to the supposition or assumption.
At times discussion may go out of the tract, conflict can be generated also answer the earlier conflict.

3. Role-play

It is one of the group methods of health education where a group of people perform certain role plays/acting to trigger knowledge and positive attitude among the people.

Advantages

It acts as a strong catalyst to trigger positive health behavior
Gives role players a chance to show the potentiality of acting

Disadvantages

Might lead to only an entertaining doing, not learning
Roleplay may not be effective due to nervousness, lack of familiarity, lack of self-confidence and appearance proficiency among the role players.

4. Demonstration

A demonstration is the method of providing awareness and assistances along with the increasing attitude of a small group of people through the influence of suitable coaching resources.
It is organized to explain the precise subjects.
The learners are given an opportunity to see and influence the device or material used in the demonstration and gives chance to prepare the procedure and interrogations and responses to simplify uncertainties

Advantages

It is thought-provoking and attracts responsiveness of the learners.

Disadvantages

Occasionally, it might be problematic to get essential equipment and resources for definite demonstration
Demonstration may not be suitable on all the topics

5. Workshop

It is an informative program for a comparatively small set of people in the specified field.
The facilitators of the workshop dynamically contribute to the procedure of learning.
It engages two-way communication and learning from both the facilitators and participants

Advantages

Dynamic contribution of each participant.
Help to increase updated applied skills.

Disadvantages

Requires adequate preparation and setup for conducting the workshop

6. Exhibition

An exhibition contains the use of diverse instruction material, exemplify, and clarify the ideas of teaching. They are advertisements, diagram, displays, videocassette, etc.
It is an organized and significant presentation of the health education to instruct large no. of people within partial time at a specific place
It helps to form public responsiveness on certain health subjects.

Advantages

Offers a better chance for learning
A fascinating and attractive method as of good decoration, presentation of material and background.

Disadvantages

It is costly.
Sometimes it is difficult to organize due to lack of appropriate resources.

7. Seminar

Seminar refers to that course in which group of people move together on a mutual platform for deliberating and learning about subjects which are of mutual concern.

Advantages

Knowledge distribution
Learning with ease

Disadvantages

High budget
Time factor

8. Conference

‘Conference’ means ‘a gathering for the interchange of understandings and judgments’. A Conference can be well defined as a summit of a proper nature of people to solve specific complications, take specific verdicts or talk over explicit problems’.

Advantages

Interchange of concepts
Improve interior communication

Disadvantages

Lack of urgency
Unproductive Governance
Lack of Tangible Accomplishment

9. Socio-drama

Sociodrama is a technique by which groups of individuals handpicked and impulsively pass a specific social circumstance communal to their familiarity.
It is also operational in illuminating values, increasing social skills, disentangling problems, analyzing an organization, developing and reviewing action tactics or educating personal efficiency and attentiveness.
Sociodrama groups might take some methodologies to function with their communal experiences. They might work on problem-solving, increasing deeper indulgent, making decisions or learning innovative title role.

Modern Methods of Health Education

1. E-health and M-health

Use of websites, apps and social media
SMS based reminders
Telehealth and telemedicine

2. Audio-visual aids

Videos
Podcasts
Infographics and animations

3. Gamification

Introduction of health messages through games

4. Peer education

5. Community based participatory learning

Challenges of Health Education

Low literacy level
Socio-cultural barriers
Religious barriers
Language and communication barriers
Behavioral resistance
Lack of adequate resources

References and For More Information

http://pmofpublichealth.blogspot.com/2012/05/health-education-method.html

https://www.advantagesndisadvantages.com/advantages-disadvantages-seminar.html

http://mukeshppatil.blogspot.com/2018/03/conference-advantages-disadvantages.html

http://www.psychodrama.org.uk/what_is_sociodrama.php

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1516-18462014000602015&script=sci_arttext&tlng=en

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