Health education – or better, perhaps, health teaching—is a key to effective individual and community action for improved health. Active programs of education are necessary to bring about thoughtful participation by adults and children alike in steps for their own health betterment and for the improvement of community health.
Health education is conceived today results from a situation in which health for individual depends as much on what he does for himself as on what can be done for him.
The aim of health education is to help people deal as much as possible by their own actions and efforts. Health education should therefore begin with people as they are—with whatever interests they may have in improving their condition—and should aim at developing a sense of responsibility for their own health as individuals and as members of families and communities.
At this junction a distinction should be made between public health education and school health education. School health education is concern with providing the group of the population of school age with basic information regarding personal and community hygiene which essential to healthy and useful lives. It embraces both didactic teaching and practice. School health education is primarily a responsibility of the school and is carried on by school personnel. It may be characterized as “that part of health education that takes place in school and through efforts organized conducted by school personnel.”
The best of present–day health teaching in the school is very definitely correlated with the other phases of community health. A close relationship should therefore exist between the school and the public health educators of the Ministry of Health. The latter should supply materials or information as opportunities develop.
Public health education, on the other hand, is concerned, directly or indirectly, with all ages of the population, and functions through both public and private agencies interested in promoting health among the people in their homes or in the community. Its function is to achieve both personal and community health and to provide support for the general public health program through informed public opinion.
The school health program properly should be considered as an arm of the public health program and thus be integrated with it. Not only the health of the children but the health of the home and the health of the community should be the concern of the school, because the school can contribute to all three.
Many schools cooperate with the Ministry of Health in an effort to appraise the health of certain students who have been referred by the teacher. Screening in the school health program is a preliminary examination by fairly simple and routine procedures for the purpose of identifying those children in needs further examination or diagnosis by qualified specialists. In this way, many disorders can be prevented, and defects can be corrected. Screening test most commonly performed by teachers and nurses include growth and development measurements and vision and hearing testing. The school physician, who may or may not be form the Ministry of Health gives periodic health appraisal to students, those who will go camping or on bivouacs. Immunizations are also provided for students who so desire, and who have obtained parental permission. Observations, deviations, and corrections are carefully noted on the students’ cumulative health records.
By: Celia I. Sarmiento | Lamao Elementary School | Limay, Bataan
