Is hygiene promotion the same as hygiene education?
Updated - Thursday 10 November 2005
Is hygiene promotion the same as hygiene education?
No, it is not. Education usually means teaching people, e.g. about what makes them ill and what they must or must not do. Often it is didactic. In the case of hygiene education for example, the educators may want to teach people the germ theory of disease in order to discourage transmission through unhygienic practices. Such information has its place, e.g. when people themselves want to know how they can avoid getting a particular disease. However, successful promotional programmes do not 'instruct' people. They promote healthy conditions and practices in other, usually more effective, ways than 'teaching', e.g., by improving access to the means for better hygiene and health, social marketing, participatory learning, and peer influence. In hygiene promotion, the individuals and communities themselves review their hygiene practices and develop ways of improving them.
