This case helps you better understand health education and how it differs from health communication and other strategies.

The Challenge

Yolanda is a public health nurse working for a health unit in a large urban centre in Ontario. Her challenge is to provide educational opportunities for expectant and new mothers to ensure that they have the knowledge and skills necessary to give their children a healthy start in life. Many of these parents are considered “at-risk” as they face barriers to good health such as low-income, social isolation and limited employment skills.

Action Taken

Yolanda coordinates a program that offers pre- and post-natal classes for parents and caregivers. Through this program, she works closely with a group of outreach workers who are community parents living in the area.

Participants meet every week. At the end of each class, participants identify the topics they want addressed at the next session. In response to their information needs, Yolanda covers topics such as the birthing process, breastfeeding, healthy eating during and after pregnancy, smoking, drugs, alcohol, healthy child development, making baby food, and parenting skills. To ensure that participants have adequate resources to meet their nutritional needs, food and milk vouchers are provided. Participants are reimbursed for their transportation costs to and from the classes. The program also provides access to childcare so participants can attend the classes.

Implications for Practice

This example illustrates the key features of effective health education initiatives including:

an extended, structured process for building knowledge, skills and capacities
opportunities for direct interaction between participants and facilitators/instructors
a learner-directed format that enables participants to select topics of interest, thereby ensuring that the sessions are relevant for them
efforts to reduce the social, economic and environmental barriers to taking part in the educational opportunity (transportation, childcare costs) and acting on the information presented (food and milk vouchers).

While health education is an important strategy for promoting health, it is seldom conducted as a ‘stand-alone’ in isolation of other strategies. Many of the case studies in the following sections illustrate how health education activities have been effectively combined with other strategies, such as self-help/mutual aid.