Primary health care, policy makers and health education: some challenging goals

A challenge to politicains and health administrators everywhere, and therefore to health education, is how to achieve a more equitable distribution of health care to the people. A new approach that may well be the answer is the use of primary health care, which is concerned with measures that will provide simple and effective health care to all people. The priniciples on which primary health care is based have much in common with those of health education, as spelled out over the past 20 years by WHO expert committees, namely: involving people in a working partnership respecting their values and beliefs, placing reliance on indigenous practitioners, etc. In both cases, "the focus is on people and action" and the primary health care context offers a challenging opportunity for health education to make a major contribution towards a fairer distribution of health services. Another area where health education has a particular challenge to meet concerns the education of politicians at all levels: health educators must do all they can to influence health and health-related policy away from those determined solely by political expediency and towards policies that benefit the people. They must also help bridge the gap between "deciding politicians" and the "consuming citizen" to help ensure that the decisions of the former meet the needs of the latter.