Health Promotion Education in India: Present Landscape and Future Vistas

Abstract

‘Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over and to improve their health’. This stream of public health is emerging as a critical domain within the realm of disease prevention. Over the last two decades, the curative model of health care has begun a subtle shift towards a participatory model of health promotion emphasizing upon practice of healthy lifestyles and creating healthy communities. Health promotion encompasses five key strategies with health communication and education as its cornerstones. Present study is an attempt to explore the current situation of health promotion education in India with an aim to provide a background for capacity building in health promotion. A systematic predefined method was adopted to collect and compile information on existing academic programs pertaining to health promotion and health education/communication. Results of the study reveal that currently health promotion education in India is fragmented and not uniform across institutes. It is yet to be recognized as a critical domain of public health education. Mostly teaching of health promotion is limited to health education and communication. There is a need for designing programmes for short-term and long-term capacity building, with focus on innovative methods and approaches. Public health institutes and associations could play a proactive role in designing and imparting academic programs on health promotion. Enhancing alliances with various institutes involved in health promotion activities and networking among public health and medical institutes as well as health services delivery systems would be more productive.

Family medicine education in India: A panoramic view

“…In order to obtain the best available insights into the imparting of family medicine teaching in India, we adopted an iterative process. [ 14 ] A detailed internet search was carried out to identify family medicine courses. The websites of Association of Indian Universities, Indian Council of Medical Research, Universities Grants Commission, Medical Council of India (MCI), Indian Nursing Council, and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare were also searched.…”

Global Health Teaching in India: A Curricular Landscape

“…Indian universities and schools have just begun to realize the need for introducing global health curricula. India currently has 398 medical colleges ( 3 ), but none of them have started imparting global health education to its students. The curriculum in the medical colleges of India at the undergraduate and postgraduate level lacks global perspectives of all health related issues.…”

“…A detailed Internet search was carried out to identify global health courses using the Google search engine with “global health, global public health, international health, global issues, and universal health” as the key words. The websites of Association of Indian Universities, Indian Council of Medical Research, University Grants Commission, Medical Council of India, Dental Council of India, Indian Nursing Council, and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare were searched ( 3 ). A similar search in the websites of the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), professional associations, namely, Indian Medical Association, Academy of Family Physicians of India, World Association of Family Doctors (WONCA), World Health Organization (WHO), and various public health institutes, corporate hospitals, and autonomous medical institutes, such as All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, Post Graduate Institute (PGIMER), Chandigarh, and Jawaharlal Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), Puducherry, were also carried out in October 2015.…”

“…We are yet to have a fuller picture of the current status, including, course content, structure, selection, teaching methods of global health, and how students are evaluated in India. At the present policy level also, there is no focus on promoting global health as a part of regular medical curriculum ( 3 ). The objective of the present work is to map courses related to teaching of global health in India and analyze its mode of delivery and implications on policy.…”

Practicing Health Promotion in Primary Care – A Reflective Enquiry

“…The present Indian medicine (MBBS) curriculum lacks health promotion component during formative training [ 19 ]. Evidence from earlier Indian studies on the student’s beliefs and practices of health promotion reported that most students assessed preventive practices in their patients but did not feel well prepared and competent enough to counsel patients about health issues [ 20 ]. Furthermore, physicians have not been trained in-service.…”