‘Health Education’ Articles
Written by Mark J. Kittleson on 15 January 2010
Folks,
We’ve been trying to make the HEDIR page more user-friendly and in that effort we’ve ignored the blog. So starting today I’ll start making a concerted effort to contribute. If you’ve been following the HEDIR, there has been a major discussion on the role of CHES and its importance/relevance, licensure of health educators and this has eventually led into a conversation about the role of health educators and RNs who deliver health education.
A few questions…
1) Should health education move into the licensure stage? If so, how much would you be willing to ‘pay’ for such license? If no, why not?
2) Although they may not be academically trained as health educators, are there other professions capable of providing effective health education? If so, who and why?
More to come.
Posted in Health Education, Politics & Policy | No Comments »
Written by hedir on 21 October 2009
Today’s speaker is Bill Cissell. Dr. Cissell has a long distinguished career in health education and has served the profession in many ways. Bill is recently retired from Texas Woman’s University where he was chair for many years. Bill graciously agreed to step in and provide this presentation after we had a sudden cancellation. Bill’s talked about the importance of community organization and how the recent election of President Obama has brought to line the importance of community organization.
Dr. William Cissell’s Presentation: Click to view
Tags: Health Education, Politics and Policy
Posted in Health Education, Politics & Policy, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Written by hedir on 11 December 2008
the Northwest Health Foundation, a regional health foundation that I respect and admire greatly, created a website to begin a conversation about health priorities in Oregon. The site, Community Health Priorities is exciting on many levels that could be fodder for other posts. For example, it echos back to my previous post about community voice, advocacy, and engagement that is made possible by new technologies but that is another post.
Today I wanted to focus on one poll question posted to the website that asked: “What’s your community health priority?” The introduction to the poll led with the statement “We know it’s hard, but if you had to choose just one issue to get additional funding, which would it be?” and the possible responses listed included the usual disease of the day suspects like: Improving air quality, More alcohol and drug treatment programs, Prevention of obesity, Adolescent and teen health awareness programs, and Affordable, quality housing.
I answered the poll question and then added a comment to the 14 other comments posted so far. My concern was that the question blurs “health care delivery priorities,” with “community health priorities. The two are very different concepts and need to be understood as distinct. Anyway, here is what I posted as a response to the poll:
I think what is interesting about this list of health priorities is that it is all about deconstructing health into tidy discrete boxes. This process of deconstruction may be good for health care redesign but it should not be confused with community health priorities. Deconstruction means that we can “value” some diseases more or less relative to cost savings on the system or which diseased evokes more fear among the public. Strokes cost the medical system a whole bunch more money (and is scarier) than childhood asthma so if that was the priority choice we should be allocating limited resources to prevent strokes and let vulnerable kids struggle to manage asthma.
Our true community health priorities should be wrapped around the concepts of social capital and connectedness. If we truly had a sense of community and were connected to each other it would radically change the shape and nature of our social fabric. In a connected community our priorities would be about promoting such things as living wages; investing in the commons (eg., public transportation, open spaces and libraries); promoting community gardens and other access to local foods; teaching community members conflict resolution, parenting and primary health prevention. Learning, daycare, food cooperatives would become the norm and not the exception. If we were truly connected as a community, it would not be an option for children to arrive at school hungry or be without health care.
So I would suggest that prioritizing the disease of the day list can be useful but engaging in a deeper conversation about root causes might be even more fruitful.
Okay, some of you might be thinking “semantics shemantics.” But I would argue that semantics matter. If your box is as narrow as to force-choice the disease of the day priority, then I would argue that you box in your imagination about the solutions. As health educators, we talk about root causes but unfortunately, we rarely work at the root cause level and instead get bogged down in discussions about what disease we should be focusing on today.
Tags: advocacy, community, community health priorities, social capital, social network, technology
Posted in Health Education | 2 Comments »
Written by hedir on 02 December 2008
There is more beauty in words than in war.
The most deafening weapons in any war should be lyrics, not landmines. Carry our well wherever we walk, saturating scars with living waters, promise.
From Split this Rock Poetry Festival
Mark Kittleson wrote in his blog yesterday about the critical skill that “The LESS the health educator talks, the MORE the student learns.” Today I would like to suggest that the other effective skill is to speak your mind. And if enough of us speak our mind, we can learn together. Health education is a collective experience. Here is an example. Today, I received this email from the web team of the Obama-Biden Transition team.
Dear Friend,
Transparency and engagement are priorities for the Obama-Biden Transition Project. Our success depends on not only opening up a process that has historically been inaccessible to most Americans, but also encouraging citizen participation. Last week, we took an important step towards these goals by asking the public to participate in a discussion about health care on our website. The result was fantastic. Started by a question from our Health Policy Team, thousands of comments poured in over a few days. Some people answered the initial question, but others engaged with one another debating and developing new ideas and approaches to health care reform.
The letter ended with these words, “This is just the beginning. These discussions are a valuable resource for Transition staff and an important way to ensure that everyone has a voice in the process.”
While I agree with Mark K. that the less we speak the more students learn, I also believe that the more we speak, the more learn. The power of words, spoken from many perspectives is the power of change.
Thoughts anyone?
Tags: advocacy, empowerment, social network, voice
Posted in Health Education | 3 Comments »
