Éducation pour la santé

Health education is a profession of educating people about health. Areas within this profession encompass environmental health, physical health, social health, emotional health, intellectual health, and spiritual health, as well as sexual and reproductive health education. Health education can be defined as the principle by which individuals and groups of people learn to behave in a manner conducive to the promotion, maintenance, or restoration of health. However, as there are multiple definitions of health, there are also multiple definitions of health education. In the U.S., the Joint Committee on Health Education and Promotion Terminology of 2001 defined Health Education as "any combination of planned learning experiences based on sound theories that provide individuals, groups, and communities the opportunity to acquire information and the skills needed to make quality health decisions." The World Health Organization (WHO) defined Health Education as consisting of "consciously constructed opportunities for learning involving some form of communication designed to improve health literacy, including improving knowledge, and developing life skills which are conducive to individual and community health." It is often thought that health education began with the beginning of healthcare in the earliest parts of history as knowledge was passed from generation to generation. Some people might be surprised to hear that health education's roots date back to the Greeks between the sixth and fourth century B.C.E. They shifted their focus away from superstitious and supernatural conceptions of health and toward the physiological causes of ailments, according to documents that have been uncovered. They discussed how physical health, social settings, and human behavior are connected to preventing disease and sustaining good health. The Greeks wanted to empower people and communities by establishing supportive settings and regulations that would promote taking medication and upholding healthy behaviors.