Perspective: A New Ethic for Health Promotion: Reflections on a Philosophy of Health Education for the 21st Century

Abstract

This article describes two models for thinking about the purposes of health education-a medical model and an education model-and traces how concerns about the validity of research have driven preference for the medical model. In the medical model, the purpose of health education is to develop effective interventions that will prevent people from adopting unhealthy behaviors. Here, health educators are expected to replicate the methods identified by researchers to effect targeted changes in health behavior. The article then describes an alternative way of thinking about the purposes of health education. In pursuing a philosophy of education, the purpose of research and practice would be to clarify basic social values and to strengthen one's faculty for making value judgments. Practitioners here use research results as a stimulus for dialogue about the role of good health habits in living the kind of life that community members find most valuable. Keywords: ethics; health education; health promotion; philosophy; researchWhat is the purpose of health education? What are we trying to accomplish? The power and the promise of the new millennium beckoned us with new possibilities. Subsequent events have only heightened the need for reexamining our goals and asking ourselves anew about the good that we seek to achieve. This article offers reflections on the ends that we now seek and the ends that we should seek, with the aim of continuing a healthy debate.To get into these questions, I want to explore a potential tension inherent in the juxtaposition of the terms health and education. I want to describe two different models for thinking about what we are doing, a medical model and an education model, at once familiar yet with interesting contrasting characteristics. I want to suggest that the dominant metaphor for thinking about what we are doing in health education is now a kind of medical model, in the sense that the overarching goal of health education seems to be to develop more effective interventions, just like effective medical treatments. The vast bulk 290

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