What's in a Name?
In Shakespeare’s classic Romeo and Juliet, Juliet asks “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose; By any other name would smell as sweet.” If my memory serves me well (and a little help from my source below), Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet meet and fall in love. They are doomed from the start as members of two warring families. Juliet tells Romeo that a name is artificial and meaningless, and that she loves the person who is called “Montague”, not the Montague name and not the Montague family. (I think my high school English teacher would be shocked that I’m discussing Shakespeare 40 years after my high school days).
Generally speaking I would agree…names are just superficial labels. However, sometimes names can give a more clear direction and can definitely improve one’s status in asetting. We have that issue in health education and I think it’s time that we come clean. I know that health education has had it’s history of wanting to change it’s name. We’ve proposed Health Promotion, Wellness, and health behavior as possible names that would more accurately reflect who we are—plus it would remove us from the almost impossible umbrella of being associated with physical education. Yet, the term health education still exists.
More recently, on many occasions, the HEDIR has had a discussion about the difference between public health and community health (or public health education and community health education). We seem to have a lot of confusion and interchangeability of the two terms. So, I’ve decided to look at a variety of resources (all on-line) to see what, if any, is the difference. My question: Is there a difference?
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary public health is: the art and science dealing with the protection and improvement of community health by organized community effort and including preventive medicine and sanitary and social science.
When I tried to find the definition of community health the term doesn’t exist? There is NO definition.
I then Googled to see what the difference was. I found a lot of inconsistency. Generally speaking, most sources cited Community health as a field WITHIN public health, and is a discipline that concerns itself with the study and betterment of the health characteristics
Wikipedia (yes I know the drawbacks of such sources) indicated that “Community health, a field within public health, is a discipline that concerns itself with the study and betterment of the health characteristics of biological communities. While the term community can be broadly defined, community health tends to focus on geographic areas rather than people with shared characteristics.”
Wikipedia then goes on to say that Public health is “the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals.”
Based on most resources, it appears that Community Health is a subset of Public Health, yet many of the descriptions are the same for both.
I then proceeded to see if I could just find the definition of public. Here, Wikipedia defined public as something that “is of or pertaining to the people; relating to, or affecting, a nation, state, or community; opposed to private.” For example a private road is owned by a person, whereas a public road is available to all.
When asked to define community, Wikipedia stated “Traditionally a ‘community’ has been defined as a group of interacting people living in a common location.”
So the question to health educators is the following: If you prepare students at the baccalaureate level to work as a health educator following the 7 areas of competencies (and they’re not going into the schools), are you preparing Public Health Educators or Community Health Educators?
Historically, I could understand if somebody would say that Public Health Educators are trained by Schools of Public Health. Prior to the 1980s Schools of Public Health basically ‘owned’ the right to offer MPH degrees. Since we had many non-Schools of Public Health programs offering a similar degree that they may have wanted to use a different term—Community Health. That might have made sense in the 60s or 70s. But since MPH programs outside Schools of Public Health are increasing at exponential rates that logic may not make sense anymore.
I propose that we eliminate the word Community Health Education from our terminology and replace it with Public Health Education. I believe the term more fully describes what health educators do at both the national, state, regional and state level. Public Health is the large umbrella and unless one is preparing health educators for a very specific focus within public health, the term community health education is not practical or useful. Plus, the term public health is HOT! You never heard government officials talk about community health initiatives…it’s always public health initiatives. You don’t hear of the Illinois Department of Community Health…it’s the Illinois Department of PUBLIC HEALTH.
We should be promoting ourselves as PUBLIC Health Educators…not Community Health Educators. In addition, school health educators (those who are truly health educators…not H & PE teachers) should also be identified as part of the public health spectrum and should identify themselves as a public health educator. Isn’t the school an important part of the public and public health continuum?
Source:
Moore, Roger. “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose.” Shakespeare Quotes. eNotes Publishing, 2006. eNotes.com. 6 Dec, 2008 http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/what-s-name-that-which-we-call-rose>
Here Here…. One more vote for Public Health Education
T Dub
To further the conversation…
CHALLENGE #1:
According to the definitions above, a public health educator is focused on public health, not private health. As such, how would it make sense for a “public” health educator to work in private settings such as worksites, hospitals, churches, etc.? Wouldn’t public health educators be limited to public sectors?
CHALLENGE #2:
The traditional definition of community given above seems limiting. It does not address the idea that community might involve more than that…an interdependence, a sense of belonging, connectedness, and/or some shared similarity or purpose. If we limit our understanding of community to the traditional definition requiring geographic location, could/should online “communities” really be considered communities?
Health education was defined by the role delineation processes at both the entry-level and the graduate-level and articulated through the CUP process. Health education has a standard occupation code (SOC) through the US Department of Labor. Prospects for changing the identity of our professional field are slim to none.
By the way, there have been other terms used as alternatives to health education. Health science was popular with faculty and graduates of the school of public health at UC Berkeley. Lots of academic departments that prepare professional health educators use this identity. Health studies is another identity used by some academic departments that prepare professional health educators; and ,of course, there is the infamous combination of health and physical education or physical education and health, as the UT Austin program was called when I taught there in the late 1970s.
Health promotion was initially popularized by Canadians and became the bastard child of health education in the USA when it was substituted for health education to assure that a congressional bill would go to the committee addressing public health rather than education. While health education was used in the title of the Bureau of Health Education when it was established within the Office of Smoking and Health in 1974, health promotion was used in the title of the Office of Health Information and Promotion when it was established within the Office of in Assistant Secretary of Health in 1978.
I imagine some of you have had similar experiences when being introduced. When asked what field I am in, I used to say simply Health Education. This was followed by blank looks or questions about P.E. Now, I always throw in the words “Public Health”, which usually avoids the aforementioned reaction.
When I entered the field of health education in the 1960s, it was somewhat daunting to describe our discipline. It was common to hear discussions among the leaders of our discipline. All that has changed during the past 30 years. Now that we have identified our seven areas of responsibility, established a certification process and can cite an SOC, I have no difficulty in stating what a health educator does. Health education has emerged into a full blown profession.
My previous statement lost a phrase from the third sentence. That sentence should have read: It was common to hear discussions among leaders of our discipline about where along the path of an emerging profession our health education was.