A Multisensory Multilevel Health Education Model for Diverse Communities

Olajide Williams and Ewelina M. Swierad
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Olajide Williams: Department of Neurology, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY 10032, USA
Ewelina M. Swierad: Department of Neurology, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY 10032, USA

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 5, 1-17

Abstract: Owing to their enormous capacity to improve health and save lives, public health researchers and practitioners have worked on developing effective frameworks for the optimization of health promotion strategies. A multilevel focus, as exemplified by the Socio-Ecological Model (SEM), is one common denominator among these frameworks. The SEM highlights important social and ecological influences on health behavior by delineating the different levels of influence. These include public policy, organizational, community, interpersonal, and intrapersonal levels, which, when considered during the development of health promotion campaigns—especially those that focus on health education—strengthen the influence of that campaign on targeted behaviors. However, the SEM lacks a complimenting framework for understanding the role of conventional and unconventional approaches to health education; that is, how to design a health education intervention that considers both the context, such as the social and ecological levels of influence, and the best approaches for developing and delivering the health education in a manner that optimizes its effectiveness in today’s modern and increasingly diverse world. Addressing this gap, the current article presents an integrative Multisensory Multilevel Health Education Model (MMHEM), which incorporates three key domains—(1) Art (innovativeness/creativity), (2) Culture (cultural tailoring), and (3) Science (evidence-based), while promoting the importance of considering the socio-ecological levels of influence on targeted behaviors. Using a successful health education intervention, called the Hip Hop Stroke, we deconstruct the Multisensory Multilevel Health Education Model and discuss its potential role as a guide for developing public health education interventions.

Keywords: Socio-Ecological Model; public health education; Stroke Education; health communication (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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