Reintegration: the slow march of progress--towards a reality-oriented concept of health education

The essay sets out to plead for a basic reassessment of many of the implicit or explicit "conceptual props and crutches" upholding traditional health education. Its main thrust is to reconstruct the many disparate bits and pieces of theoretical assumption which have come into being through the various historical phases of health education and, in doing so, to rebuild an image of social reality in which health educators can hope to operate more meaningfully and, possibly, more effectively. The general theory behind the call for an integrated approach to health education is that this art can only thrive when openly confronted with its traditional limitations determined both by limits of social awareness and social structure. These have to be made the subject of discussion on health education "theory" in order to affect change. Examples of an alternate approach applied in the Federal Republic of Germany are quoted to stimulate discussion.