Categories of Health Education

As an extension of the lifestyle, health promotion, and health service goals of the 1974 Surgeon General`s Report on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, 15 major subareas of health were defined.

Health Education is the primary instrument for accomplishing these goals. Essentially all health education issues can be placed into or more of the following categories :

Basic Aims of Health Education

The sole responsibility for health education should not lie with the physician, the professional health-educator, the public health department, the school system, the media, or the individual.

The responsibility must be a shared one, each sector playing an integrated and mutually supportive part in facilitating change toward a desired behavior.

What Is Health Education

The 1972-1973 Joint Committee on Health Education Terminology defined health education is "a process" with the intellectual, psychological, and social dimensions relating to activities which increase the abilities of people to make informed decisions affecting their personal, family and community well being".[1]

Green and his colleagues define health education as "any combination of learning experiences designed to facilitate voluntary adaptations of behavior conducive to health.[2]