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Health education is very important in building a strong and productive society, since healthy people function and interact better with each other. Health education polishes the already existing health knowledge among the people, through curriculums and programs dedicated solely towards spreading awareness about health education.
1 . What Is Health Education?
Health education is nothing complex but exactly what the name says, it is the promotion of general knowledge regarding one’s health, disease prevention, and preventable illness. It is a set of philosophies and methodologies meant to educate the general population, their communities, and even medical practitioners about anything related to health.
Health education is a combination of various disciplines such as biology, psychology, medical sciences, and physical science. Also includes understanding the environment around you to better protect yourself from any possible health danger.
It is meant to inspire adolescents, young adults, and adults to adopt healthy habits that shall help them lead a healthy life. Health education is spread through specific health services, human services, nutrition, food, psychological services, and promoting a healthy environment and disease prevention.
Institutions like schools, colleges, and offices have the potential to play an essential role in spreading health education. They can make it a part of their curriculum and hold various workshops and seminars to impart effective health education.
2. What Is the Importance of Health Education?
Several institutions hold workshops and seminars to spread the importance of keeping good health through health education in rural areas as well as in urban areas. Apart from knowing general health maintenance, the difference in lifestyles of these two areas requires specialized knowledge for the urban and rural dwellers to maintain well-being.
These professionals study the particular health needs of the communities to give proper intervention. When people are aware of healthy behaviours there will be lesser people in the hospitals for trivial matters, which will reduce overcrowding. People who need serious attention will be tended well.
3 . Schools and Health Education
Teaching children to score higher on their report cards should not be the only aim of schools and colleges. As these institutions are responsible for creating a new generation that will step into the world as fully functioning adults.
In school, health education should promote how to maintain mental health, emotional health, sexual health, spiritual health, disease prevention, eating healthy food, chronic disease awareness, help improve health knowledge, ways to lead a healthy lifestyle, and substance abuse prevention to name some.
Leading a healthy lifestyle is a habit that should be inculcated in people right from the start so that they are aware of what a healthy lifestyle is. They should be made aware of risky behaviors and how to avoid them in order to have a longer and healthier life.
3.1. Why Schools?
Schools are the right place to instill the importance of health education in the coming generations and this will even raise the overall social health status. Therefore, it is of prime importance to promote health education and healthy activities through health educators and coordinated school health programs.
As children hit puberty they must be aware of the risks of alcohol consumption, substance abuse, and sexually transmitted diseases, what is a proper diet, the importance of adequate physical activity, and health education in schools will provide them with a safe space to learn about adolescent health risks.
It has been observed that well-designed and properly implemented public health education programs have led to an increase in health knowledge, healthy choices, reduced sexual risk behaviours such as unintended pregnancies and STDs, and even a drop in substance abuse and tobacco. All this marked improvement in academic performance and led to academic success.
3.2. Sexual Health
Sexual health is an important component of health education and should be a must in school. Adolescents are vulnerable to being drawn towards poor sexual activities which might have a tremendous impact on their lives.
With easy access to sexual content on the internet, the need for sex education has increased to let teens understand that what they are consuming on the internet is fake and that it can harm them as they are not aware of the area.
Teens should be made aware of healthy sexual habits and of their changing bodies along with that of the other gender. This will lead to sexual health promotion and multiple health outcomes in a positive direction as they will be aware of various aspects related to sexual maturity and will be better equipped to handle it.
4. Health Education Curriculum
School curriculum must comprise a set of objectives that relate to student behaviour regarding knowledge about health-enhancing behaviours, skills, and attitudes. It should engage students in healthy habit development activities regularly to inculcate in them the importance of healthy habits and well-being.
School staff need to be well-trained and well-versed in the programs to ensure the effectiveness of the program.
Knowledge should be imparted through creative means such as audio-visual measures, activities to participate in, books, computer games, or programs so that the curriculum should connect with the people and help them engage.
5. 10 Points to Know the Importance of Health Education
Here we shall throw light on some basic importance that having health education reaps:
5.1. Help Understand the Changing Milieu
To know how to keep healthy in such a fast-changing world where everything has taken a toll on people’s health be it social, physical, emotional, or mental, having programs that help you understand your health better and alter your body according to the changing world is an elixir.
Children are the future and thus when healthy habits are instilled in them from the beginning, adopting them in the future as adults won’t be a problem as it will be a way of life for them. The Health educational processes impact every stratum of social life.
5.2. Positive Impact on the Economy and its Finances
The economy is the production and consumption of goods and services that involve money within any country, and such economic transactions are carried out by the citizens.
So if we have a healthy population, one that is in control of its health then the community’s economy will thrive and the country will have good finances. Since there will be lesser absences due to poor health, the work will be done on time reaping good results.
Otherwise, the countries will have higher healthcare spending and healthcare costs, the money that could be put to use to enhance the economy if they had a healthy society. Health education helps in reducing healthcare spending.
5.3. Improves Cognition
When we provide health education, it promotes health-enhancing behaviour among the people and touches areas such as violence prevention, awareness about obesity and tobacco use, obesity prevention, premature death due to nutrition lack, and sexually transmitted diseases to name some.
All the above mentioned have a devastating effect on a person’s mind and his ability to think straight. Some because they directly affect the brain’s functioning such as substance abuse, while others because the toll on health doesn’t let the person think about anything else.
Like schools should have health education curriculums, companies should have nutrition classes in their offices to help their employees eat better and healthily, which will only boost their sales. A win-win for all.
Thus, when people are educated about following a healthy routine and why to eat healthy food they will understand how their habits are affecting them adversely.
5.4. Motivates People to Keep Healthy
Getting hooked to a healthy routine is only a hassle to people in the beginning but once they follow it through there is no turning back because people genuinely see the changes in their body and overall health with their new healthy habits.
Keeping healthy is also a kind of addiction once you do it, you can’t go back. Having fitness freaks around you such as your peers and family members is also a motivation to many people to ditch their destructive habits for a healthier life.
5.5. Enhances Attitude towards Health
This thing applies to anything in the world. When we are unfamiliar with something, having an affinity towards it seems kind of impossible. People at large do not understand their body and its functioning. Therefore, educating them about the human body and ways to keep this marvelous machinery properly working is important.
Once people are friends with their bodies and their functioning, their attitude towards them is automatically enhanced. It is human nature, you care for what you love. So one aim of health education should also be making people love their body and understand its functioning.
5.6. Longer Life
The healthier the habits the more you stay away from diseases and when the body is free from diseases, it is natural that the person is going to have a longer healthy life.
Disease prevention is in our own hands which can be prevented through following a routine that nurtures good habits.
A person should indulge in a balanced diet rather than fast food as the unhygienic conditions in which they are cooked are a house of unknown diseases.
5.7. Improves Immunity
This goes without saying that when people know the importance of health education and start to apply it to their daily life, then their healthy habits will reward them with greater and improved immunity.
We learned the extreme importance of having a strong immune system during the 2020 pandemic when the poor health habits of people took a toll on their health and lives.
5.8. Improves Mood and Boosts Energy
When you feel healthy, the mood and energy are automatically uplifted, aren’t they? So imagine feeling that way all around the year just because you are now aware of the basics of keeping healthy.
Feeling healthy impacts the day-to-day working and chores of a person, with a good mood and boosted energy you would not drag yourself through the day but rather enjoy every bit of it. A healthy lifestyle fuels you through the day.
5.9. Builds a Better Future
Imparting health education ensures that the country will have a bright future since its citizens are healthy and in turn, dedicated to their work which helps them build a better future for themselves.
Also, the newer generation equipped with the importance of health education since the beginning will increase a country’s position on the health index.
5.10. Effect on the Sale of Junk Food
This might be a little overambitious impact of health education. Still, it should have some effect on the sale of Junk food.
When the public at large will be aware of the harms that these junk and fast food have on human health and how they are a very big reason for poor health, conscious people might turn away from consuming them.
They may even persuade others to not consume these foods because of their ill effects and the sales might be affected for the good of the people. Bad for the company, of course!
6. Features of an Effective Health Program
An effective health program should be engaging, informative, have a long-lasting impact on the minds of the people, be well structured, contain systemic strategies, and cover a broad area of health and healthy habits, and healthy routines.
It should be able to bring people together and should be easy to understand and implement. The health program should lend help to people who need help in changing their lives and positively influence them.
Conclusion
Teaching about Health Education is the best gift that can be provided to people as it makes them self-sufficient and independent in terms of taking care of themselves.
Health education teaches people to love their bodies and understand the human anatomy better which in turn makes living a healthy life easy and not a chore.
Covid-19 was a wake-up call for the whole world and showed how important it is to put your health first because if you are healthy, it is then when other things matter.
We should be conscious of our habits to lead a healthier life, which is why the importance of health education is immense in the current world scenario.
Last Updated on by Icy Canada Team
