(IEC)

, It is an action taken by a person to maintain, attain, or regain good health and to prevent illness. Health behavior reflects a person's health beliefs. Some common health behaviors are exercising regularly, eating a balanced diet, and obtaining necessary inoculations.

 Health education It can be defined as the principle by which individuals and groups of people learn to behave in a manner conducive to the promotion, maintenance, or restoration of health. there are also multiple definitions of health education.  The World Health Organization defined Health Education as "comprising of consciously constructed opportunities for learning involving some form of communication designed to improve health literacy, including improving knowledge, and developing life skills which are conducive to individual and community health.“

 Diagnosis or assessment of health needs, problems, attitudes, and communities at risk of illness.  Designing a suitable health education program with community involvement  Planning for appropriate setting  Use of appropriate teaching aids/ methods

 General socio economic situation  Patterns of illness  Target group in the population  Health needs  Attitudes, customs, feelings and ideas that can be changed by education  Identification of communicators

 The message of the program must be clear, understandable and acceptable

 Home  Clinics or health centres  Hospitals  Community meeting places  Anganwadi and schools

 Understand the group  More resourcefulness  Effective and penetrating

 Health education can be carried out through: 1. Working with individual persons, couples and families 2. Working with small groups of community members 3. Mass approach

 Personal contact or face to face discussion  Helps to correct misconceptions  Helps to understand attitudes and ideas of individual  The nurse should follow the following steps:

 Study the house hold record  Make a note of what is to be discussed  Check on facts to be given on a referred service available  Fix the date and time of interview to suite the convenience of the individual or family

 Introduce herself and greet the person according to local custom  Build up rapport with individual  Judge the length of nurse’s stay according to the convenience of the family

 Lead the people to do the things and listen to the other person’s point of view  Do not take decisions for the individual but help him to arrive at the right decision on his own  Be sensitive to the feelings, moods and the reactions of the individual  Refrain from moralizing  Try to help the individual face and solve his/ her problems  Avoid arguments and be flexible

 Command any action taken on suggestions made  Find out what difficulties have come in the way of carrying out the suggested measures  Provide adiitional information as required