From Personal Health into Community Action: Another Step Forward in Peer Health Education

Abstract

Health education as a field is turning from its individualist roots in which behavior change is viewed as an isolated phenomenon that occurs within an individual to a new contextual framework in which behavior change occurs within a complex ecology of individuals interacting with and influenced by other people, cultural norms, access to healthcare, affiliation with community—the entire environment of a person's life. This article focuses on the “how to's” of translating this shift in the field of health education into a practical and replicable action step forward in peer health education. The author first examines four assumptions implicit in many current peer health education training and program delivery models. She then describes a training curriculum that helps reshape the philosophy and activity of peer health education programs from an individualist paradigm grounded in information to a community-oriented model grounded in service. This training model, entitled From Personal Health Into Community Action, is intentionally designed to facilitate students' understanding of the connections between their personal health and the health of the community.