Health Education: Role in Public Health and Community Importance

Learning Objectives

• Understand the definition of health education
• Understand its role within public health
• Explain the importance of health education on communities
• Discuss what methods influence health education
• Define health literacy
• Explain how the pharmacy team can contribute

What is Health Education?

World Health Organisation
"Health education is any combination of learning experiences designed to help
individuals and communities improve their health, by increasing their knowledge or
influencing their attitudes."

Why is Health Education Important?

• Educates patients to make healthier life choices
• Improve the life expectancy of the community
• Helps inform patients to make decisions on their treatment
• Prevents people from dying prematurely
• Enhances quality of life of community
• Help people recover from episodes of ill health or following injury
• Help improve economy

Types of Health

Spiritual Health
Physical Health
Environmental
Health
Mental Health
Social Health
Emotional
Health

Who is Responsible for Health?

Office for Health Improvement and Disparities
"We focus on improving the nation's health so that everyone can expect to live more of life in
good health, and on levelling up health disparities to break the link between background
and prospects for a healthy life."
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Health

3 Domains of Public Health

Health Improvement

• Inequalities
• Education
• Housing
• Employment
• Family/community
• Lifestyles
• Surveillance and monitoring of specific diseases and risk factors

Improving Services

• Clinical effectiveness
• Efficiency
• Service planning
• Audit and evaluation
• Clinical governance
• Equity

Health Protection

• Infectious diseases
• Chemicals and poisons
• Radiation
• Emergency response
• Environmental health hazards
• Disease and injury prevention

NHS Long Term Plan - 10 Key Areas

• Deliver the biggest impact for the public's health:
• Prevention
• Smoking
• Obesity & Type 2 diabetes
• Diet & Alcohol
• Antimicrobial Resistance & Vaccines
• Cancer
• Mental Health
• Air Pollution
• Children & Maternity
• Gambling
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How Do We Educate The Public On Health Behaviours?

?Which of the following is seen as a healthy
behaviour?
£Which of the following is seen as a healthy
behaviour?

How Did You Know These Are Healthy Behaviours?

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Ways To Educate The Public

Health Promotion
Campaigns
Information from
Healthcare
Professionals
Social/Family
Influences
Media
Government
Schools

1. Health Promotion Campaigns

benefits of
being active
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Friendly, confidential drugs advice
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Join Gina and become
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sugar swaps
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It's really easy to do. Simply
attend a face-to-face Information
Session or watch the video
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Sugary
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Plain
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Sugar Swap cards
Knowledge is Power . Moustache is King
Search 'Be Clear on Cancer"
STAYWELL
THIS WINTER
MOVEMBER
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ONCANCER
SMOKEFREE

Example - Do You Know The Signs of a Stroke?

FACE
Face. Has it fallen on one side?

2. Information from Healthcare Professionals

• Play a central and critical role in improving access and quality health care for the
  population
• Provide essential services that promote health, prevent diseases and deliver health care
  services to people
• Information from any healthcare professional is trusted

2. HCP - Information Provided

• When patients are anxious or worried about their treatment, it is often difficult to retain
  information.
• Whenever patient and carer experiences are captured and analysed, 'information'
  always comes up as a big issue.
• Regardless of how good healthcare staff think the information they give out is, the
  experience of patients and carers is often that it could be a lot better.
• Good written information also helps healthcare services to run more efficiently.

2. Healthcare Professionals (HCP) - Written Information Provided

• The Information Standard is a certification scheme for health and social care information.
• Help patients and the public make informed choices about their lifestyle, their condition
  and their options for treatment and care.
• It applies to all organisations producing evidence-based health and care information for
  the public.
• Any organisation achieving the Information Standard has undergone rigorous assessment to
  check that the information produced is clear, accurate, balanced, evidence-based and
  up-to-date

2. Information Standard

How to do:

• Always write from the patient's point of view and assume you have only little knowledge of the subject
• Use everyday language
• Use patient friendly text - personal pronouns such as 'we' and 'you'.
• Reinforce the information that patients have been told at clinic.
• Explain instructions, e.g. why a patient shouldn't eat for six hours.
• Help people make decisions by giving them facts about risks, side effects and benefits.
• Tell people what other information, support and resources are available
• Be up to date - give the most recent practice and latest phone numbers.
• Let people know if information is available in other formats.

2. Information Standard - Example

• Weston Area Health NHS Trust developed a new approach to providing information for
  relatives
• A survey carried out and found patient and relative information was poor.
• To address this, an information card was developed to give out to all relatives.
• The business card style adopted seemed to prevent loss of the card
• Patients and relatives frequently comment that it is very useful
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3. Social and Family Influences

• Estimates vary, but it is widely accepted
  that a population's health is largely
  shaped by factors beyond access to
  health care.
• Health is something that starts in families,
  schools, communities and workplaces
• Age, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and
  disability
  Figure 1: The factors that influence an
  individual's health and wellbeing
  MEN
  LIVING AND WORKING
  CONDITIONS
  GENERAL SO
  WORK ENVIRONMENT
  UNEMPLOYMENT
  TAL CONDITIONS
  EDUCATION
  WATER AND
  SANITATION
  AGRICULTURE
  AND FOOD
  PRODUCTION
  RS
  HEALTH CARE
  SERVICES
  HOUSING
  AGE, SEX
  AND CULTURAL
  FACTORS
  Source: Dahlgren and Whitehead.3!
  https://www.health.org.uk/sites/default/files/What-makes-us-healthy-quick-
  guide.pdf

3. Social Determinants

• 8 key social determinants to health:
• Friends, family and communities
• Money and resources
• Housing
• Education and Skills
• Good work
• Transport
• Our surroundings
  See lecture on 'Determinants of health and health and illness behaviour' for more information.

4. Media

• Can be highly influential
• Access health information from internet, social media, newspapers, TV, radio etc.
• Information is quick to share
• Not all information is accurate
• Social media - known to have an impact on mental health
• The promotion of food just 1.2% of advertising spend each year goes on vegetables,
  compared with the 22% spent on confectionary, cakes, biscuits and ice cream.
  EXCLUSIVE: Statins linked to
  20,000 side effects and 227
  deaths
  CONTROVERSIAL heart drug statins have been linked to almost twenty thousand
  reports of side effects and 227 deaths.
  By LUCY JOHNSTON, HEALTH EDITOR
  PUBLISHED: 00:00, Sun, Jul 5, 2015
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5. Government

• Involved with setting policies and laws
• Impact on health promotion campaigns
• COVID pandemic seen government have a larger role in communication of health
  advice.

6. Schools

• Schools can hep shape children's behaviours towards health.
• The literature showed that education is a strong predictor of lifelong health and quality of
  life.
• School health programmes can cover both the prevention and treatment of disease and
  malnutrition in a school setting.
• Services are designed to promote students' physical, cognitive, and social development.
• Provide a number of opportunities for healthy lifestyles e.g. breakfast clubs, after school
  sports, music lessons etc.

6. WHO - Health Promoting School

• WHO and UNESCO have launched a initiative "Making Every School a Health Promoting
  School"
• The initiative will serve over 2.3 billion school-age children and contribute to the WHO's 13th
  General Programme of Work target.
• Children spend 1/3 of their time in school each week.
• Schools are a unique setting for creating health and cover an important time period for
  establishing healthy behaviours.

6. Obesity in Children

• The prevalence of obesity in children is increasing globally.
• Schools are an obvious setting for health promotion because health and education are
  closely linked
• The challenge of engaging parents and the influence of the home environment, family
  lifestyle and lack of parental support for healthy eating and PE.
• Find unhealthy cultural norms and conflicting nutritional messages at home as a barrier
• Recognised that effective health education is best supported in the home, especially for
  nutrition where parents are the key food providers

Health Literacy

Health Literacy

• Refers to people having the appropriate skills, knowledge, understanding and confidence fo
  access, and navigate health care information and services.
• Low levels of health literacy impact significantly upon a person's ability to:
• manage long term conditions;
• engage with preventative programmes; and
• keep to medication regimes.
• This leads to worse health outcomes, increased health inequalities for affected individuals, and
  increased preventable mortality.
• In 2015 Public Health England published a report entitled "Improving health literacy to reduce
  health inequalities".

Health Literacy Benefits

• Efforts to improve health literacy can have a range of benefits.
• They can increase health knowledge and build resilience, encourage positive lifestyle
  change, empower people
• In England, 42% of working-age adults (aged 16-65 years) are unable to understand or
  make use of everyday health information, rising to 61% when numeracy skills are also
  required for comprehension.