Health as defined by the World Health Organization is “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity.” Health Education on the other hand is the mere understanding of how to maintain personal health. Health education helps people acquire knowledge about physical, mental, social, and emotional health. Health education provides the appropriate and necessary information to help people maintain a healthy lifestyle, it also emphasizes teaching valuable skills required to adopt, practice, and maintain healthy behaviors. The importance of health education lies in the fact that is an ongoing process of bringing changes in health knowledge, attitude, and behavior. The goal that health education holds is to improve the health of each and every individual by providing them with adequate knowledge and helping the community become healthier.
Need and Importance of Health Education:
- Enhances Knowledge:
Health education also provides students knowledge about physical, mental, social, and emotional health. It helps them understand and improve their health and behaviors, making them aware of diseases and bad health. It also aims at reducing diseases from the environment. People should be aware of the importance of health education, and the role it plays in our community to help people improve their behaviors to live a better lifestyle.
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- Encourages Overall Development:
In kids health consists of physical, mental, and social well-being. Health education for kids is necessary as kids are more likely to be vulnerable than adults, health education is required for their overall development. Parents take this responsibility of keeping kids healthy; they often provide them with healthy foods associated with adequate amounts of exercise and regular sleep schedules. Parents help kids ensure their safety, but that’s not enough, children should be provided with proper health education classes and seminars. As children are vulnerable beings, who are more prone to illness than adults, proper health education must be provided to help them understand the importance of health, and become healthier in terms of physical, mental, and social well-being. The importance of health education must be provided in schools, this would help students develop positive attitudes and social skills to help them gain a new level of relief and well-being. It is said that students having good health are more likely to be good in studies, whereas students having bad health are more likely to be not that good in studies. Having health education implemented in schools helps kids to make healthy choices in the mere future.
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- Shapes one’s personality:
A school is a social institution that helps shape children’s personality and behavior, in fact, schools are also termed as the best personality development institute for children. Being healthy also affects kids' personality, personality development for kids is directly associated with kids' well-being, as an average healthy kid would have a better personality development chance compared to an unhealthy kid. Health affects all factors of a kid's growth.
- Encourages Healthy Lifestyle:
Health education is not only about being healthy and having a healthy lifestyle. It also includes emotional, social, and mental health. Educating students on all these factors of health not only brings out their motivation but also helps them follow healthy behavioral patterns. As a result of this, children maintain their health, take care of their sleeping schedules, eat healthily, stay away from unhealthy foods, prevent disease and avoid unethical behaviors. Having a health education seminar in school helps students from being involved in risky behaviors, helps them understand what’s good and what’s bad, helps them from falling into drugs, smoking, and other unethical practices, it also helps them from unwanted diseases and prevents them from various injuries. Health education implemented and followed from a very young age forms healthy adults. A healthy person will always be happy and will enjoy life fully. He/ she would always be considered as an asset to the community.
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Schools have started practicing health education; physical health education classes are conducted from time to time to help improve students’ physical health. Physical fitness is shaped by exercises and proper healthy diets. Health education is accessible to all ages of people, it is taught to everyone to help improve their health and live a healthy life. School-based education on health helps students with functional health knowledge and develops attitudes, beliefs, and adequate skills needed to live and maintain a healthy lifestyle and adopt healthy behaviors throughout their lives.
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Health education is important for kids because kids are the backbone of the country, developing healthy and physically fit kids is a win-win for both the kids and the community, having appropriate health education for kids will help them stay away from bad influences such as drinking, smoking, and drug usage and help them shape into healthy human beings. Thus the importance of health education is an important issue which should be followed and implemented not only by schools but also offices as it’s never too late to start thinking and taking care of your body.
