Health Education and Promotion Being Realigned

The Ministry of Health and Wellness is realigning its health education and promotion infrastructure to place greater focus on preventive rather than the curative aspect of healthcare.

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Dunstan Bryan, said that the objective is to more effectively address the problem of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) among the Jamaican population, including diabetes and hypertension.

He said that a properly resourced and realigned health education and promotion programme is critical in this regard.

“When we look at what is required……[we see that] prevention rests in health promotion and education, whether we are talking about primary prevention, secondary prevention or tertiary prevention,” he stressed.

Mr. Bryan was speaking at the general meeting of the Jamaica Association for Health Education (JAHEP) held recently at Cardiff Hotel and Spa in Runaway Bay, St. Ann.

He said that NCDs are becoming a major public health burden, noting the need to change the behaviour of persons to cauterise the problem.

“If we are to stop the trend of obesity, if we are to stop the trend for hypertension, diabetes, cancers, all of those NCDs; if we are to stop the trend of communicable diseases, dengue, and HIV, prevention must be the priority action that we utilise,” he contended.

“When you look at the sick profile in Jamaica, in 10 years, no matter how much hospitals we build, we cannot accommodate the number of people that we have that are going to turn up at our hospitals with all of these diseases and therefore, we have to recalibrate,” Mr. Bryan stressed.

He said that to begin this shift to effective prevention strategies, a reclassification and realignment of posts within health education and promotion is necessary, which he indicated, will be addressed under the public sector compensation review.

In addition to providing a more strategic management approach to health promotion and education, Mr. Bryan said it is recognised that there needs to be a realignment and amalgamation of roles and functions to make the work fair and equitable.

“There are some activities that are carried out at the parish level and at the regional level, that are similar, however, the compensation is dissimilar,” he pointed out.

He noted that as part of the process, the roles of Behaviour Change Communication Officers will be consolidated as Health Education and Promotion Officers, while the Community Peer Educators will be reclassified as Community Health Workers.

Mr. Bryan said that a consultative process is still underway with unions and bargaining groups as it relates to the impending changes.

Health education and promotion are important strategies in disease prevention.

This is by tailoring and presenting health information to target populations on particular health topics, including the health benefits/threats they face, and providing tools to build capacity and support behavior change.