Final Project
Assignment 5
HCA 331: Introduction to Health Education
Instructor: Monica Vargas
Erika Hernandez
Date: 12/16/12

In this assignment mentions the overall of a Health Promotions and the Education. We have learned in this five week course from the word meaning of health to actually becoming a health educator and the roles that they play in any kind of work setting. As you get into reading this assignment you will also understand and relate to these professional people play a huge role in our day to day lives. The word health itself has a “dynamic state or condition of the human organism that is multidimensional (i.e. physical, emotional, social, intellectual, spiritual, and occupational) in nature, a resource for living, and results from a person’s interactions with and adaptations to his or her environment” (McKenzie, Pinger, & Kotecki, 2012, p.5) (Chapter 1). A health education as mentioned in our text is “ any combination of planned learning experiences based on sound of theories that provide individuals, groups, and communities the opportunity to acquire information and the skills needed to make the quality health decisions” (Joint Committee, 2001, p.99) (Chapter 1). There were many historical events that have happened in our past that shaped up in the health education. I have found three major events that I found were an interesting and would like to share with you. The first historical major event was in the 1900 to 1950s; Charles Winslow defined the public health to be focused on preventing diseases, prolonging life, and promoting physical health and efficiency through organized community efforts. During this period of time, the public health departments focused on sanitary inspections, disease control, and the health education. Public health functions have included the child immunization programs, health screenings in schools, community health services, and substance abuse and sexually transmitted disease control programs. These programs have help out to this very day reached out to people in need of any assistance in regards to what they need. The next major historical event was in 1980 to 1990, was the first recognized cases of AIDS occurred in the United States in the early 1980s. In 1988, The Institute of Medicine Report was defined public health as organized community efforts to address the public interest in health by applying the scientific and technical knowledge and promote health. Finally, the last of the major historical event that interested me was in 2000s. The Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Respond Act of 2002, this provided the grants in hospitals and to the public health organizations to prepare for any bioterrorism as a result to the September 11, 2001. All of these were some historical events that really interested me and how it was different then to now. Today’s health education discusses the health problems that health care costs have continued to escalate. The medical insurance has been an issue to the patients knowing that the cost is high and people are cannot afford it. Some of these health care professionals have been searching for ways to deliver better value for their patients depending on their financial situations. People are looking for any opportunities like programs and other sort of help to help them meet their needs while they are in the hospital. These people do have insurances that their deductibles are not even meet that they still have to pay their remaining balance of the deductibles in order to start getting any treatment. I have also insurance that has been provide at work, but there are some doctors in our plan that are associated with the hospital that are willing to work with us by the co-pay not being as much as they would be asking us to pay. For an example, as employee to the hospital we have full benefits even at hospital. For any procedure that would need to done at the hospital would not be a cost to us. I feel great for this but I look at it in the other person’s perception. Some patients have to pay every cent just to have a procedure done and been seen by the physician in the hospital as well. Basing medical decisions we as the people can make this method a structured one the values the framework to help this accelerate change in a way that it can embrace the efforts on a daily basis to motivate it along to be equal in a way that the insurance may not be a problem in the health care. A health educator is defined as a person who teaches people about their behaviors that promote wellness to others. A health educator is “a professionally prepared individual who serves in a variety of roles and is specifically trained to use appropriate educational strategies and methods to facilitate the development of policies, procedures, interventions, and systems conducive to the health of individuals, groups, and communities” (Joint Committee on Terminology, 2001,p. 100). These educators are responsible to implement programs to the community as a community liaison and gather the information and data, manage the programs in the place that they will utilize methods and techniques to increase awareness on healthy behaviors. These educators have seven areas of responsibility that they must follow in order to make their job easier which include: * Asses needs, assets, and capacity for health education which is based on the capacity for education. In this area, it requires the health education specialist to assess the information and provide a foundation to implement programs and plan (Cottrell, Girvan, & McKenzie, 2012). * Plan health education is gathering the information and resource from around a specific population that will help them develop a program. In this area, they require to develop a goal and objective as part of the program to help the individual. * Implementing health education is the actual execution of your program or plan. This area involves the use of methods or techniques that help provide the spread of information to the public and promote changes in health behaviors (Cottrell, Girvan, & McKenzie, 2012). * Evaluate and research will monitor the use to improve their practice as well as depending on the settings, utilize tests, surveys, observations, and other methods of data collection to determine whether more steps are needed or to change your approach completely. * Administer and manage is utilizes leadership and coordinates to see if the program works. This also includes the combination of “people skills” and business management (Cottrell, Girvan, & McKenzie, 2012). * Serve as a health education resource person this not only allows a specialist to develop programs, but also serve as participants well. It involves the skills to access needed resources, and establish effective conductive relationships (Cottrell, Girvan, & McKenzie, 2012). * Finally Communicate and advocate for health and education is to have the communication skills to make them accessible to the community in which they provide the information to. This may require them to serve as a liaison between medical doctors/researchers and the rest of the community. Health education can communicate detailed information on safety, changes in diet and exercise, or other positive behaviors (Cottrell, Girvan, & McKenzie, 2012).
A health educator specialist is a “professionally prepared individual who serves in a variety of roles and is specifically trained to use the appropriate educational strategies and methods to facilitate the development of policies, procedures, interventions, and systems conductive to the health of individuals, groups, and communities” (Joint Committee, 2001, p. 99)(Chapter 1).
The overall role of a health education specialist is to provide a general idea of what health education specialists do, but do not provide the detail necessary to practice in a health education/promotion. Their role is to promote, maintain, and improve individual and community health to any kind of patient. By the education specialists teaching them they will create interventions with the individual and assist them to a better way of living a health live. I believe that a health educator will continue to grow not only in the settings mentioned but in other places as well. I have learned that these steps that were mentioned in our text book really help them in achieving their goals of the day. All of these factors have led many health educators to grow and expand programs to help the patient, student, or community educate in terms as to what is being told in any settings. I really enjoyed learning from this assignment and realize that we are health educators in any way we may see it or how it is proven in any setting.
Who receives the health education? I would think anyone from everywhere. They could be any one from a school, community, homes, health care sites, and even a consumer marketplace. Health education must be tailored correctly by the recipients to participate in order to be helped and reached to. Health educators work in several settings that could be in a school setting, hospital setting, public setting, and worksite setting as well.
There are several resources that help the health educators. I have two that would like to share with you. The first one is Center for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC), which includes the health communication planning model and developed by the Office of Communication at the Center for Diseases Control and Prevention. Next, we have the American Heart Association (AHA), which means it provides the health education specialists with a wealth of information and materials about many cardiovascular diseases and stroke.
A Certified Health Education Specialist (C.H.E.S) means as it mentions in our text a health education specialist who has met all necessary requirements and has been certified by the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing, Inc (Cottrell, & McKenzie, 2011). In order to obtain your certification current the person is required to complete 75 hours of continuing education during a 5- year time frame in order to maintain certification.
Each of these areas plays a huge role in a health educator profession as to what is needed in their everyday job setting. There are four settings mentioned in our text, but I chose three. These settings differ in their organization structure in their mission, the centrality of the mission to health education, and the process of what health educators do is the same. I really can relate to this due to our previous assignments that I have learned a lot in a health educators settings in the workplace and how their job varies from a day to day.
The health educator in a public setting is defined improve the quality of life through the prevention of any disease and treatment one physical or mental health condition. I can relate to this as when I use to be a community public relations person. My responsibilities were to go out and visit profit and non-profit organizations and promote our home health services to the public. I would discuss what types of nursing services we provided and how they would benefit from having a nurse at their homes with of course a medical necessity letter stating that the patient does qualify to have the services as well as having the doctor order for the services as well. Public health educators gathered data information and research them from social networking sites and share them to the public meaning to their doctors as to any results we might have to share from taking their vital signs to who knows even by assessing them with other possibilities the nurse might detect. Their education and training is available throughout the world. We establish the patient’s goals and objectives that support an overall view on the well-being to the patient. Our way of communicating to the doctor’s office by either the nurse or even the doctor him/her self will have a day to day performance of the nurse as to how the patient is doing with any medication changes to any other studies that was abnormal and know the patients knows about. Sometimes the disadvantages that I would get in this setting was that the patients progress notes from the nurse was turned in late and to related it on a daily basis to the primary doctor was not good. Some doctors want to know how their blood sugars are doing and their high blood pressure is going. They are right in which I couldn’t agree because they could have changed any medication from one day to another and without the nurses notes I really couldn’t do or say anything just that I am sorry and it won’t happen again. The advantage of this is that some doctors office are already electronic medical records and as soon as the nurse would chart on their patients chart the doctor would get the report immediately and know how his patient is doing.
Next we have the health education on a worksite setting. In our hospital setting we as employees have a Health Link that is dedicated for our health and fitness center open to the employees only. This link that we have to log on is at our hospital settings where we get our emails while we are working. I relate to this as a like a HR person in which everything is confidential and on a one to one basis. When hired at this hospital we were given a blood work as to where our sugars and cholesterol levels were. The wellness educator drew blood work in order for them to have a base line as to where we as individual stand. We were also given a blood pressure check rating and urine tests too which in dedicated if we were a smoker or not. If our urine came back positive we couldn’t get hired. These educators develop a result-driven to a specific fitness level in which we engage with our family physician and talk about our goals as to what is being needed in our results. Since our hospital is a non-profit organization and our wellness educators have created a material that with our organization by screening their employees by their health and any other activities related to increase any awareness that we as employees might not know of. Then they gather our results and educate our results and what we need to do to improve our readings. There are programs that they provide us to help us improve and the classes are free of charge. Our results goes to our benefits department which help us lower our cost of benefits depending on the results if everything is in a normal range we get a discount to our benefit package. The programs that are offered are from a personal training, classes in aerobics, health education classes, our nutritional support team, and monitoring our blood pressures as well. Every person who gets hired at our hospital the wellness educator explains the results and everything that was mentioned in a repeated in a day to day basis. Hospitals are in need of employment and always hiring from being a health educator to even a Certified Nurse Assistant. I might see myself as to help these employees educate them as like I would to a patient. A thought of that is first take care of you in order to take care of others. The advantage to this job setting is that as an employee we benefit from the free programs that are offered and a thorough health education being taught at work not has to miss work due to the education given. The disadvantage to this would be the cost of the blood work that was drawn from the hospital and the programs that are free would not pertain to us due to our employment.
Finally we have the healthcare educator which works in several of settings from a doctor’s office to even at a hospital. I really like this setting because I work at a hospital and I have been seeing how our educator in our floor has a big role on her shoulders that I would l one day help her in our unit. I work in the Labor and Delivery; Post Partum and even in Nursery unit that everything there seems to amaze me. I have been seeing our healthcare educator work with our patients and how she finds her way to go to the extreme in providing and showing those programs that are out there for them to get help. Their role in a hospital setting is to fully educate the patients and explain their diagnosis and any tests that need to be done in order to assist with their way to recover. For example, this happened in one of the days that I was working. A patient didn’t know she was diabetic even after she delivered her baby. Her sugars were high and uncontrollable. Our educator goes to the room of the patient and does an assessment as to if the patient understands what she was diagnosed with and able to cope with her sugar testing. The patient was instructed to use a glucometer and even to use insulin which they taught her what were the pros and cons to this. While she was instructing the patient she located service to help her develop educational materials from other departments within the health care facility. There are advantages to this in which she was there to teach this patient in which she didn’t even know she was diabetic and helped her in educating her what to do with her levels. For instance, what she should do if the sugar is low or vice versa. The disadvantage to this is that we don’t know if the patient followed up with her family doctor and if she is still checking her sugars as she was instructed to. Some of these patient before they go home they do what was instructed and educated while they were there; but as soon as they leave it’s like they forget and we really don’t know if they are still doing as instructed.
In this last part of our assignment is in regards to the HIV Prevention Program that was implemented by the Idaho State Department of Education Coordinated School Health Program (www.sde.idaho.gov/site/csh/hiv_std.htm). The main purpose of this program is to provide the educational resources, technical assistance, and staff development opportunities for the development and promotion of youth with the emphasis on preventing HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). This program is designed to expand and strengthen the capacity of local education agencies to plan, implement and evaluate the effectiveness of health education, including HIV/STD education. In this website, the target audience are the youth in a high-risk situations the develop the capacity for schools, alternative schools and other agencies to provide education in preventing important health-risk behaviors among indigents youth, minority youth, youth with special education needs and other youth in high-risk situations. By involving of youth that is mentioned on the website, HIV/STD prevention efforts to help assure the programs efforts and address the needs of the youth.
In this website, the collaborations and stakeholders that are involved are the Idaho Department of Education receives funds through a cooperative agreement with the Center of Disease Control and Prevention- Division of Adolescent and School Health (CDC/DASH). Also the DOE coordinates as mentioned the administration of statewide surveys such as the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) and the School Health Education. The point across that this website is trying to say that providing the staff development for teachers to acquire the skills they need for effectively delivering skills-based health education curriculum. This effective delivery works toward the integration of HIV/STD to prevention education within context of coordinated school health education in the classroom.
On the other hand, the second part to this is titled, “HIV, Other STD, and Teen Pregnancy Prevention and Idaho Students”. In this website, this is a very informative website that the youth can even understandable and reliable to having the point is sent across. The information given is reliable as to where the young youth can understand how 2011 Idaho Youth Risk Behavior Survey indicates that high school students who currently are sexual active to being an alcohol and other drug use. As this website shows, the Sexual Risk Behaviors have had 40% ever had sexual intercourse, and 18% were never taught in school about AIDS or HIV infections. Alcohol and Other Drug Use that young youth drank alcohol or used drugs before the last sexual intercourse and the 2% used a needle to inject any illegal drug into their body one or more times during their life. There are solutions provided in this website that the youth can find as well like better health education, more comprehensive health services, more supportive policies, and last more family involvement. Although this website is an informative that even I have learned what was not taught to me while I was younger. This website also demonstrates that there are solutions to any of these problems to checking what is the status on its health education and who these services can provide for them as well as any type of supportive policies that we as health educators can gather information and help these students from preventing any type of disease without learning the consequences. Thanks to these two websites that have shown us how we can also contribute and gather as much information and do community public education and help the young youth out.
In conclusion, as I have mentioned in the previous assignments I believe that a health educator will continue to grow not only in the settings mentioned but in other places as well. I have learned that these steps that were mentioned in our text book really help them in achieving their goals of the day. All of these factors have led many health educators to grow and expand programs to help the patient, student, or community educate in terms as to what is being told in any settings. I really enjoyed learning from this assignment and realize that we are health educators in any way we may see it or how it is proven in any setting.

References:
National Association of School Nurses. Issue Brief: School Health Nursing Services Role in Health Care. Silver Spring, MD: National Association of School Nurses; 2003.
Cottrell, R. R., Girvan, J. T., & McKenzie, J. F. (2012). Principles and foundations of health promotion and education (5th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Benjamin Cummings.
United States Department of Labor: Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2012). Occupational employment statistics. Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes211091.htm www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpao/hwi/programdesign//index.htm Center for Disease Control and Preventions. www.americanheart.org American Heart Association. www.cdc.gov/yrbss HIV, Other STD, and Teen Pregnancy Prevention and Idaho Students www.sed.idaho.gov/site/csh/hiv_std.htm HIV Prevention Program