Spiritual_Wellness_Holistic_Health_and_the_Practic

Health Educators and the Future 65
effects; and (5) transfer and disseminate health education technology that proves
effective.
What are other things we must do? Tool up and keep up. Most of us take part in
conferences and continuing education. These are ways of keeping up. What is it that
we ’ re not doing? Getting out into the community that we want to reach to find out
what is really going on there? Learning to use a computer or a new program? Reading
the most recent issue of a health education journal? Getting some innovative health
education started in your organization, even though you think the cards are stacked
against you? Creating a partnership with another organization even though there ’s
been no collaboration in the past? Tool up, tool up, the twenty - first century is around
the corner.
SOME CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
Physicists say that electrons can move both forward and backward in time. Using this
analogy one could say that the future is not out there in front of us but resides in this
very moment — wasn ’ t it Pogo who said we have met the future and it ’ s us?
With this idea in mind, there are some tasks I think are especially important for
every health education leader. We need to think through the topics that need to be
added to our health education programs to keep them salient in the coming decade and
create new ones to address new needs.
One can think of a range of topics: health practices sensitive to issues in minority
or aging populations; integrating physical/mental/emotional aspects of health; environmental
safety and health; family relationships; ethical decision making; cultural
aspects of health issues; new approaches to forestalling health problems through risk
reduction; self - management of chronic diseases, including HIV; dying (activist older
adults will want to have as much say over the circumstances of their death as they ’ ve
had over their life — people will quite literally want to learn how to die); genetic counseling
and use of genetic information in decision making; the relationship of new medical
procedures to quality of life — one could go on and on.
We also need to explore new channels for getting health education into the action.
A number of channels will be on the forefront in the next thirty years: activism — we
need to capitalize on all the power and energy that ’ s out there for our health education
agendas; the workplace — proposals for health insurance will only increase the need
to get effective health education into the place of employment; health care organizations
— there is more and more receptivity to the idea that health education makes a
difference in the management of disease — this venue will remain an important setting
for our programs; peer education — the huge number of older adults already functioning
as peer educators is a hint of the power of peer education to come; technology —
the possibilities are exciting.
Why do we need a sense of the future? To keep an eye on life and try to nudge
incessant change toward a direction we recognize as progress. “ No person can lead