Health Education

To truly understand what health education is all about, first one must understand the meaning of health itself. The World Health Organization (WHO, 1947) defines health as, "the state of complete mental, physical and social well being not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." A health educator is one who informs people on how to achieve and maintain good health and promotes environmental and lifestyle changes where needed. As a future health educator I completely agree with the World Health Organization's definition, health is not just about being disease-free, it is also about being satisfied with the person you are. In this paper, I am going to talk about what my experiences have been with health education and promotion up until today, how others view the importance of health, and conflicts that affect those who I am surrounded by and my own personal biases. I am going to incorporate all of this into my main topic, my mother's diagnosis of Coronary Artery Disease (CAD). My earliest experience with health education was in the seventh grade. It was the first time I took a health class. At that age, I never really considered health being a state of complete (mental, physical, social) well-being; I just thought it meant not being sick, eating right and exercising. I did not know much about other aspects of health, such as the mental and social. It was also the first time I was actually introduced to sex education. I did not know much about sex education mainly because my mother was a very religious woman, and talks about sex were forbidden in the house. Everything I learned about health education was from school. During my high school years, I became more aware of what health really was and how I could achieve and maintain good health as I went through many personal experiences concerning my well-being as well as learning from others' experiences. It was not until my freshman year of college that I noticed how much people and society in general affected our