If any profession should value and encourage reinvention, it’s health education. Over its 100-year history, health education has reinvented itself many times.
Originally, in the early 1900s, when epidemics were of major concern, health education was conducted through journalism, public speaking, and information sharing.
Beginning in 1910, interest shifted to alcohol and drugs and elementary school health programs were launched with an eye toward producing draft-worthy adults to better defend our country and its ideals. Health education was conducted through lectures and pamphlets.
This continued into the late teens and twenties, when, after the influenza epidemic and World War I, communicable diseases (particularly sexually transmitted diseases) were the focus of attention. Hospital and community-based lectures and pamphlets were enhanced by other methods of information communication: newsletters, films, filmstrips, and exhibits. Physical education was very important and went hand in glove with health education.
During the 1930s and 40s, and as the first masters degree program in public health education began to graduate students, community organizing became a major health education intervention.
In the 1950s, after World War II, veterans’ health was a major concern, and hospitals and clinics jumped onto the health education bandwagon. Written and oral communication skills continued to be the sine qua non of good health education, but there was a definite change in emphasis from publicist to educator.
Self-help and consumerism were all the rage in the 1960s as was social engineering. Health education began to include service planning and evaluation, behavior change, and group dynamics.
By the 1970s, worksite and occupational wellness programs were being implemented by employers, unions, health maintenance organizations, and public agencies. Interventions became behavior-change theory based and the focus shifted to lifestyles and personal behaviors and chronic disease management. Outreach and follow up became important health education tasks.
With the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s, communicable diseases emerged once again as a major health concern and joined chronic disease management as a critical health education focus. Interventions included traditional information sharing strategies, community organizing and individual and group behavior change therapies. But new health education methods were also being introduced or solidifying their toe-hold in the health and medical communities: audio-visual communication, mass media campaigns, and advocacy. Initiatives were introduced into prisons and other institutions.
Though health education skill and competence requirements clearly were ever-changing depending upon the health issues of the time, the 1978 Health Education Role Delineation Project set out to identify core health education responsibilities. Following the role verification profess and the national Conference for Institutions Preparing Health Educators in Birmingham, AL in 1981, the Framework for the Development of Competency-Based Curricula for Entry-Level Health Educators was published in 1985. The framework outlined seven areas of entry-level responsibilities for health education specialists, including 79 sub-competencies. The framework gave direction and focus to the professional preparation of health educators and was supported by a new national health education specialist certification exam first administered in 1990.