Ejournal 3

Health Education Approaches

Health Education Approaches are target, goals and objectives and approaches.  Health education strategies and activities should coincide to target audience for it is essential for healthcare educators and health experts to understand the background of the audience prior conducting a health education or implementing a program. Knowing the right and specific approach will help the community change their behavior towards misinformation of misconceptions to have healthy lifestyle.

Conferring to the example given on my reflection for Ejournal 2. Health education activities are expected to reduce the underlying risk factors and maintain the health of community, every individual and people in the community are the appropriate targets of health education on the misuse of herbal medicines and unapproved medicine by FDA and DOH.  On the individual level, giving the right information that not all herbal medicine are supplementary drugs to cure COVID- related symptoms.  Group and Community members as described by Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Ministry of Health. (2011) is a collection of people who have a feeling of belonging and share common culture, beliefs, values and norms. Gathering people or conducting a medical talk by a medical expert will help them increase their knowledge if a drug is approved by FDA and DOH, if this has undergone rigid testing and for public consumption unless prescribed by a doctor and adverse effects if taken inappropriately. With the widespread of technologies, information dissemination can be done on Zoom meetings, infographics, news and other social media platforms. With the right information people will posting fake news and consumption of the said drugs.

However, there are limitations in conducting series of seminars of talk for they may not reach the rural areas that is why government and DOH will play an important role by taking the responsibility on how to control the distribution on local areas, importation, exportation, advertisement is also subject for FDA approval. Intervention of fake news on social media platform should be also be taken into consideration to reach the target participants to attain ultimate goal healthy and informed lifestyle.

Individuals of the community should be responsible enough to achieve a healthy practices while medical experts like doctors, community health educators and practitioners are there to educate and inform that will improve their overall health.

References

Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Ministry of Health. (2011). Study session 2:  Approaches to health education. In Health Education, Advocacy and Community Mobilisation.Available at http://www.open.edu/openlearnworks/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=159)

Food and Drug Administration. (n.d). FDA Advisory No. 2020-767 || Public Health Warning Against the Purchase and Use of the Unregistered Drug Product OTC Lianhua Qingwen Jiaonang. Retrieved from https://www.fda.gov.ph/fda-advisory-no-2020-767-public-health-warning-against-the-purchase-and-use-of-the-unregistered-drug-product-otc-lianhua-qingwen-jiaonang/