Health education is a vital part of learning because of the rising health hazards that need to be addressed to ensure that human health standards are improved. The best approach to deal with a health education program is by identifying the behaviours and lifestyles of the members of the neighbourhood through assessing their needs for health education. This can be achieved by; determining what health problems might exist in any given group, determining the community resources available to address the problem and careful data collection and analysis (Sharma & Atri, 2009).
Positive perceptions, enablers and nurtures help the members of the neighbourhood to engage in the health practices that will lead to improved healthy living. Perceptions may include; knowledge, beliefs and attitudes, enablers may include; available resources, referrals and types of service, while nurturers may include; members of the extended family, peers, employers, health personnel, religious leaders and government officials. The members of the neighbourhood should be able to understand that; any health status can be changed; appropriate prevention measures can be developed to address the identified health problems; other than lifestyle there are other factors that that can affect one’s health e.g. heredity, environment and behaviours; health behaviour changes occur in various stages and it is a process, not an event (Carol Campbell, 2010).
However, some factors that hinder the motivation of members of the neighbourhood to effective health education are; reluctance to change to improved healthy living, beliefs that do not allow some practices of good health living for instance choice of food to be eaten, people’s attitude towards health education and poor living standards that cause exposure to unhealthy living (Freeth, 2005).
Various cultural aspects which promote healthy living should be put into consideration. These aspects may involve carrying out circumcision to reduce chances of contracting sexually transmitted diseases and also establishing a good parent-child relationship to ensure that parents are confident in giving their children advice on various behaviours that expose them to unhealthy living for example drug abuse and pre-marital sex. Also, culture should allow various practices that enable one to get exposed to a wide range of other people’s cultures to learn from others and incorporate what benefits them (Freeth, 2005). Every member of the community should try to meet the level of living standards to live a healthy life to avoid risks of getting the disease.
The existing aspects which have posed a threat to the neighbourhood are those which cannot be overcome, for instance, the existence of incurable diseases, the only remedy to this is to find possible ways of contracting such diseases, but the challenge remains if already one is suffering from. Another aspect is the issue of environmental pollution which one has no control over it, for instance, an industry emitting gases which pollute the environment yet produce products that are essential to our living.
Negative attitude towards health education from the members of the group poses a great challenge because of no interest in learning yet they are ignorant. The issue of language barriers is a challenge also because of the diverse groups. Again, since it involves various groups, in terms of age, it is hard to come up with a program that suits everyone since, in a setup, every age has its different way of approach and thus requires that each program be implemented according to the target group.
References
- Campbell C. (2010). Health Curriculum Research Assistant. Mississippi Cooperative Extension Service10/95
- Freeth D, Hammick M, Reeves S, Koppel I, Barr H. (2005). Effective Inter-Professional Education: Development, Delivery & Evaluation. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Sharma M, Atri A. (2009). Essentials of International Health. New York: John Wiley & Sons.