Empowerment Education: Freire's Ideas Adapted to Health Education

Abstract

Empowerment Education is proposed as an effective health education and prevention model that promotes health in all personal and social arenas. The model suggests that participation of people in group action and dialogue efforts directed at community targets enhances control and beliefs in ability to change people's own lives. The article is divided into three parts: a literature review demonstrating that powerlessness is linked to disease, and conversely, empowerment linked to health: an exposition of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire's empowering education theory with a comparison to traditional health education; and a case study of an empowering education substance abuse prevention project. The Alcohol and Substance Abuse Prevention (ASAP) Program is a University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Emergency Center, and community and school-based prevention project for adolescents. The case study will present ASAP's theoretical underpinnings and social practice, evaluation results, preliminary understandings of the stages for an empowering process, and future questions for practitioners interested in this approach. Empowerment education with its emphasis on organizing is recommended to be integrated into other prevention strategies of health promotion, disease prevention, and health policy.

Educación popular y nutrición infantil: experiencia de trabajo con mujeres en una zona rural de México

“…nuir los problemas nutricionales y cuyo eje de acción responsabiliza en su totalidad al individuo; dejando de lado los factores socioeconómicos que se encuentran vinculados con la producción, abasto y consumo de alimentos por la población 3,5,6,21 . La otra es ubicar los problemas de la nutrición dentro del contexto que genera la pobreza y abordar la educación nutricional como un instrumento que promueva e impulse entre los diferentes sectores de la población, su participación directa en decisiones políticas y económicas fundamentales para su desarrollo humano 5,7,13,22,25 . Esta última propuesta de educación en nutrición se vincula con la estrategia de promoción de la salud, en el sentido de que ambas se enfocan en la construcción de espacios para el empoderamiento de la población, es decir, esto se reflejará en una mayor participación en la toma de decisiones sobre todo en aquellos aspectos que determinan su salud.…”

Healthy Cities: Facilitating the Active Participation and Empowerment of Local People

“…8,10,11 Reflecting growing dissatisfaction with conventional approaches to health development, the 1978 Alma-Ata Declaration 12 highlighted social justice and equity 6,13,14 and focused on community participation in health planning and delivery. 15 Although WHO's approach was subject to critique for its atheoretical and depoliticized pragmatism, 6,16,17 the Health for All movement gained widespread support in "developing" and "developed" countries.…”

Acesso a orientações de higiene bucal entre escolares da rede pública de ensino

“…No entanto, ressalta-se ainda que o processo de educação em saúde deve considerar, no planejamento e na execução das intervenções, algumas características dos indivíduos, o que se confi gura na "alfabetização em saúde", sendo tal processo elucidado no modelo teórico proposto por Sørensen et al 12 , em 2012, para avaliar níveis de alfabetização em saúde. Aliado a isso, está o empowerment (empoderamento), que se refere ao processo em que essas pessoas criam ou são dadas a elas oportunidades para controlar o seu próprio destino 12,13 .…”