Spiritual_Wellness_Holistic_Health_and_the_Practic

Health Educators and the Future 63
We already have experience with multi -component, multi-level programs. Smoking
cessation is a good example. Our efforts in the United States have included information
campaigns, smoking restrictions, health provider counseling, incentives such as reduced
insurance premiums, smoking cessation clinics, and school health education.
Another area is one I ’ m familiar with, asthma education. The National Institutes
of Health is undertaking a national asthma education program which is producing
media campaigns and informative materials; a major professional education effort is
underway, as is patient education provided by hospitals. There are efforts to change
school system policies prohibiting asthma medicine - taking at school; there are family
education programs being made available by voluntary organizations; there is involvement
of major professional associations such as the Thoracic Society and the School
Nurse Association; there is a push for changes in reimbursement policies to cover
asthma self - management education.
These multi- faceted programs targeted at several levels of influence will be the
norm in the future. Our efforts have to become larger, to have wider impact (Cofield,
1992; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1990), to be delivered through
partnership and collaboration with all the relevant organizations and groups. We will
see these integrated, multi - level efforts in school health also (Behrman, 1992). There is
growing recognition of the need to integrate education, health, and social services
within our school systems. We ’ re moving beyond the notion that one system —schools —
can address all the needs of kids, to the idea of partnerships of systems in which the
school will be the fulcrum. Despite the current controversies about schools as the place
for delivering health services and effective sex education, schools in the future will
be key in collaborations to serve kids health and social service needs. The gap between
school and community services will by economic and moral necessity close. The lines
between school and community, and school work and real life, will disappear.
LEADERSHIP FOR HEALTH EDUCATION
These observations bring us inevitably to the question of leadership. The failure of
leadership in the United States is a big topic of conversation. At least one pundit has
noted that leadership has been confused with parroting out - of - context findings of public
opinion polls. Political leaders listen to the pollsters, determine the direction of
the latest survey, adopt those opinions for the moment, and purport to be leading the
parade. This isn ’ t leadership — it ’ s the exact opposite.
In health education, we have to create leadership and shape the flow of change
(Beckhard & Pritchard, 1992), change that is responsive and sensitive to the people we
serve. How do we do this? We have to start with ourselves personally. We have to exercise
leadership and help to develop it in others. What is leadership anyway? One expert
in the field of business put it this way: “[A]n effective leader is the person who has a
long and well - integrated memory, constantly open to new input ” (Hine, 1991). A
leader shows the way, guides, causes progress, creates a path, influences, begins.