Health Promotion Education: Selecting Educational Strategies

Lecture is one of the oldest formal teaching methods, which imparts information, influences opinion, stimulates thought, and develops critical thinking through verbal messages.
Learners are usually passive in lectures, but its effectiveness is enhanced when students are allowed to clarify their understanding.
Individual instruction, such as counseling, is a personalized teaching method that can be used when the range of individual differences within the target group is great.
It is inefficient from the provider's point of view but efficient for the learner.

Mass media includes four techniques: mass media, audiovisual aids, educational television, and programmed learning.
Messages are conveyed through television, radio, charts, posters, manuals, or teaching machines, addressing large numbers of people.
The target group often makes little or no effort to receive the message.
Mass media is considered relatively ineffective for specific target groups, but is efficient educationally due to low unit costs.

Audiovisual aids are similar to mass media but typically reach a more limited audience, such as children in a classroom or patients in a clinic.
They are intended to supplement and reinforce other educational methods.
Examples of audiovisual aids include audio-only materials (e.g., cassette tapes, records), visual materials (e.g., textbooks, charts, posters), and both audio and visual components (e.g., movies, slide-tape programs).

Programmed learning is a complete lesson that allows learners to progress at their own rates.
Educational television is a self-contained instructional program, but is generally used for an entire class.
Skill development is a performance-oriented educational method that emphasizes the development of specific psychomotor competencies.
Simulations and games are experiential methods that stimulate and aid learning, such as games, dramatization, sociodrama, role-playing, case studies, and computerized models.
Inquiry learning is a discovery approach that encourages students to formulate and test their own hypotheses.

Media selection factors include cost, target group, and predisposition of the target group toward the service or program.
Communication selection criteria include factors such as complexity of the message, target group's educational level, and desired behavior change.

Evaluation can be done at three levels: process, impact, and outcome.
Process evaluation focuses on professional practice, monitoring quality through various means such as audit, peer review, accreditation, certification, and government surveillance.
Impact evaluation focuses on the immediate impact of the program on attitudes and behavior, assessing whether short-term goals have been met.
Outcome evaluation focuses on mortality and morbidity, assessing whether the incidence and prevalence of the condition have been affected.

Five different approaches to health promotion: medical or preventive, behavior change, educational, empowerment, and social change.
Each approach has its own objectives, methods, and worker-client relationships.
The medical or preventive approach focuses on reducing morbidity and premature mortality, targeting whole populations or high-risk groups.
The behavior change approach aims to encourage individuals to adopt healthy behaviors, assuming that people can make real improvements to their health by choosing to change their lifestyle.
The educational approach provides knowledge and information, developing skills to make informed choices about health behavior.
The empowerment approach helps people identify their own concerns and gain the skills and confidence to make changes.
The social change approach targets policy or environmental changes, aiming to make the healthy choice the easier choice.

Approaches to health promotion in the context of healthy eating include medical, behavior change, educational, empowerment, and social change.
Each approach has its own aims, methods, and worker-client relationships.
The social change approach is targeted towards groups and populations, involving a top-down method of working and requiring commitment from the highest levels.

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