Spiritual_Wellness_Holistic_Health_and_the_Practic

142 Philosophical Foundations of Health Education
OPPORTUNITY FOR HEALTH EDUCATION AND
HEALTH EDUCATORS
The opportunity for health educators to shape and refine the concept of behavioral
health springs from the breadth of their field. As mentioned previously, health education
spans many areas. Health educators function everywhere behavioral health reaches
and operates: school, health care, criminal justice, community, workplace; they encompass
public, private, and voluntary sectors. The opportunity for health educators lies in
the fact that the promise of behavioral health has not yet met the reality of behavioral
health. It has not produced a seamless system of care to meet the mental health needs
of people (Mechanic & McAlpine, 1999; Ross, 2000). As a concept, behavioral health
is still in its formative stage.
Motivating me to action is the health education socio - ecological model (McLeroy,
Bibeau, Steckler, & Glanz, 1988), which supports and mandates health educator efforts
at multiple levels, from programs and services for individuals to organizational and
community change, to media campaigns, to advocacy for policy initiatives. Working
at these different levels can help to ensure mental health and substance abuse education,
programs, and services share equity with other areas of clinical care. The model
suggests that health educators move beyond their own settings to bring our broad set
of health education skills and expertise to bear on shaping what is behavioral health. In
particular, health educators ’ efforts in three areas can influence the ultimate practice of
behavioral health.
Health educators can work to help define behavioral health as a system of care
that spans prevention to treatment to promotion and wellness for all people, communities,
and organizations. To a large degree, behavioral health continues to focus on individuals
with severe mental health and substance abuse illnesses. Only recently have
models been put forth that reflect more expansive practice that focuses on health
behavior assessment, health promotion and wellness, families, and communities
(Altman, 2001). Such models open the doors to reducing stigma, achieving parity in
mental health and substance abuse programs with those provided for physical health
needs, and meeting people ’ s mental health needs (prevention to treatment to promotion
and wellness). By not joining the discussion but choosing to stay within our own
settings, be they schools, public health agencies, hospitals, clinics, or businesses, and
trying to address the mental health needs of those we serve, we potentially miss the
larger debates about how to finance and shape the arena to meet these needs. Health
educators need to be part of this dialogue. We can help to shift the behavioral health
paradigm from being synonymous with treatment and payment to being synonymous
with care and promotion.
We need to demand accountability. A shift has occurred. Evaluation and public
accountability of mental health and substance abuse education, programs, and services
under behavioral health have changed. Lumping together mental health and substance
abuse prevention, intervention, and treatment under the banner of behavioral health
may make sense in the long term. However, in discussions about behavioral health,