Policy: practical and research challenges and options for health education in Nigeria

Nigeria's new policy on health is based on a primary health care (PHC) system. It consists of hospital services and primary health care services subsystems. The subsystems are interlinked by referral services, and the strength of the total system, should be augmented by intersectoral-, community participation-, and traditional medical-inputs. A functional proportion model (FPM) is proposed here to show interrelationships as well as ideal/relative extent of primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of care within each subsystem. The health policy vividly enunciates a clear-cut role of health education as an enabling tool for PHC implementation. But it fails to commit itself to actual mechanisms for implementation support. Consequently, health education in Nigeria, at present, lacks professional identity and leadership, despite sporadic initiatives by the academia. It is suggested here that the situation could be remedied by deliberate expanded policy on health education-strengthening public policy support for health education practice and research.