Health promotion and health education are two concepts that are of interest in the world today. They are essential tools to the policymakers and governments since they help in ensuring that people attain great wellness and health standards. While health promotion uses advertisements to assist people in maintaining and developing good health, health education uses social sciences and the government to pass information to people on various diseases and how to prevent them. The purpose of this paper is to describe the differences that exist between health promotion and health education while exploring different health promotion organizations and finding evidence of the organizations.
Differences Between Health Promotion and Health Education
Health education draws from biological, physical, psychological, and emotional experiences and medical sciences to educate and inform people about various diseases to promote good health. This does include the prevention of disabilities and premature deaths due to activities and lifestyles that are faulty ( Whitehead, 2018) . It does not only aim at increasing awareness about health but also impacts skills and knowledge to maintain and develop attitudes and behaviors which lead to wellness and good health. Generally, it is said to take the shape of field studies to promote good health.
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Health education is being introduced in schools as a subject to impress on students the importance of healthy attitudes and behaviors. It also tries to shift the responsibility of making awareness of diseases and their prevention through healthy attitudes and practices ( Whitehead, 2018) .
Health promotion is not a field of study like health education, but it is described as support for conditions and endeavors that result in better wellness and health. Its strategies are designed such that they not only handle a health problem affecting a single or small population but instead promote awareness to an entire community generally ( Whitehead, 2018) . It is aimed at influencing the behavior of people as well as organizations to change lifestyles and accepting responsibilities in health problems that have arisen. Health promotion is in the shape of advertisements to influence the behaviors of people as well as making them understand health attitudes and behaviors' importance.
Health Promotion Organizations
Various health promotion organizations in the United States are aimed at influencing people's behavior and attitude so that they can change their lifestyles to ensure that they are in good health. These organizations include the Weight watcher, YMCA, Silver sneakers, and diabetes support groups, among others.
The Weight Watchers
A company that has its headquarters in the United States, which offers services and products to help in habits related to health such as weight maintenance and loss, mindset, and fitness. It has helped many millions in losing weight through the latest behavior change and nutrition science. The organization has different programs and food plans such as the WW Freestyle and SmartPoints, respectively. It uses publications such as magazines cookbooks and guides to pass information to the people.
YMCA
It is a non-profit community organization that serves people in the United States through well-being and health programs. It promotes health and plays a significant role in the revolution of chronic diseases like cancer, stroke, diabetes, and heart disease prevention, saving lives, reducing the cost of health care, and improving health. It has programs such as the parent-child program, day and summer camps, childcare and after school care, and the youth in government programs.
Diabetes Support Groups
They include groups such as the Diabetes sisters, TuDiabetes, the Kentucky one Health among others. The Diabetes Sisters group, which is also known as the Sister Match, connects diabetes patients and usually accommodates 18 years and above-aged women who live with any diabetes. It uses articles, forums, webinars to promote good health and awareness.
Literature Review
Weight Watchers
Gudzune et.al (2015) in their research found out that at 1 year, the participants of weight watchers 2.6% weight loss more significant than education and that the highest percentage of Americans were willing to spend a lot of money on proprietary or commercial services on weight loss with Weight watchers indicating the application of services offered by this organization. They also found out that most clinicians considered referring their patients with obesity of overweight to weight watchers since the organization proved long term outcomes.
Weight Watchers has been identified to have been provided with Medicaid programs for its beneficiaries and a review of efficacy by the proprietary and commercial weight loss programs in 2005 identified weight watchers as the only program with a demonstration of effectiveness in the achievement of modest weight loss as explained by Gudzune et al. (2015).
YMCA
Bush et al. (2018), found out that YMCA has school-based programs that effectively help in physical activities of adolescents in schools and YMCA has partnered with other community organizations and universities in ensuring that community health is promoted and improved at the grass root. They found out that the organization serves people who are more than 20 million by offering after school programs, youth sports, and camping. Bush et al. (2018) identified that YMCA was selected by the Steps program in 2004 to be its partner in ensuring that people make the right health choices through collaborative projects focused on school nutrition, grocery stores, and physical education.
DiabetesSisters
Han et al. (2019) in their investigation found out that a national advocacy organization for those women living with diabetes of any type partnered with DiabetesSisters to launch and develop DiabetesSistersVoices, a patient community that is virtual to help in engaging women living with diabetes to talk about their experiences and create a peer support platform. The organization uses platforms like Twitter and Facebook to ensure people view the posts, and it reaches a large number of people. In the research done by Han et al. (2019), it was indicated that the DiabetesSisterVoices platform has strong acceptability and feasibility of patients online giving a whole different experience to the people.
Conclusion
Both health promotion and health education activities are usually important requirements for health professionals. The two are closely related even if they are not interdependent since they are all meant to ensure good health and wellness of human beings. Health education aims at motivating people to accept the process of changes in behavior by influencing their attitude systems, beliefs, and values directly. It involves providing information and educating individuals and society on how to acquire better health. On the contrary health promotion usually involves economic, political, and social changes to ensure that the environment is convenient for health.
Health promotion organizations such as weight watchers, YMCA, and diabetes support groups like TuDiabetes, DiabetesSisters, KentuckeyOne are aimed at helping people achieve good health through their attitude and behavior. Weight Watchers are aimed at maintaining weight and ensuring weight loss through its programs such as SmartPoints and their magazines like WW Freestyle. YMCA promotes the revolution of chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes, and heart diseases. The DiabetesSisters connects women above 18 years of age through social media platforms to share their experiences.
References
Bush, P. L., Haggerty, J., Repchinsky, C., Wright, M. T., Loignon, C., Granikov, V., ... & Pluye, P. (2018). Organizational Participatory Research in North America. In Participatory Health Research (pp. 179-204). Springer, Cham.
Gudzune, K. A., Doshi, R. S., Mehta, A. K., Chaudhry, Z. W., Jacobs, D. K., Vakil, R. M., ... & Clark, J. M. (2015). Efficacy of commercial weight-loss programs: an updated systematic review. Annals of internal medicine , 162 (7), 501-512.
Han, P., Nicholson, W., Norton, A., Graffeo, K., Singerman, R., King, S., & Bennett, W. (2019). DiabetesSistersVoices: Virtual Patient Community to Identify Research Priorities for Women Living With Diabetes. Journal of medical Internet research , 21 (5), e13312.
Whitehead, D. (2018). Exploring health promotion and health education in nursing. Nursing Standard , 33 (8).
