Health Promotion Education Key to Healthy Community

Author: Sanjay Bhonge, May 20 2015 - That a healthy nation can progress economically and socio culturally is a known fact. Every nation works towards providing health facilities at the grassroots level by implementing various health programmes for the benefit of the community.

Yet, we can see that the people in many places are hesitant to accept healthy behaviours. The reason behind this is lack of motivation and positive attitude, likely due to ignorance and lack of understanding of the importance of appeals made by the government.

This can be tackled by providing correct information through various media and means of communication. This is the role of the health promotion education and educator: When a person gets a consistent flow of information and doubts are clarified at the right time, attitudes change, and a person becomes motivated to accept behavioural change. There is one more thing that is important: every time, when it is time to seek information, it should be provided by the person who is knowledgeable and has authority to speak on that subject.

But, unfortunately, we are lacking in this - we are spending more on popular media and mass communication channels but are ignoring developing personnel with adequate knowledge and motivation to provide knowledge and motivation to the community-at-large at the right time and the right place through interpersonal communication, which is the most effective way to bring about the behavioural change in the community.