Health education - including teaching about hygiene and sanitation - is an important aspect of public health.
An ethical dilemma
A danger in health education is in imposing cultural values.
The number of people who prefer tinned peas and tinned fish to real peas and real fish must be increasing every year, and plenty of people who could afford real milk in their tea would much sooner have tinned milk — even that dreadful tinned milk which is made of sugar and corn-flour and has UNFIT FOR BABIES on the tin in huge letters. In some districts efforts are now being made to teach the unemployed more about food-values and more about the intelligent spending of money. When you hear of a thing like this you feel yourself torn both ways... First you condemn a family to live on thirty shillings a week, and then you have the damned impertinence to tell them how they are to spend their money... Yet all the same it is a pity that, merely for the lack of a proper tradition, people should pour muck like tinned milk down their throats and not even know that it is inferior to the product of the cow.
While there is no simple solution, it is critical to emphasize empowerment in designing a program, and understanding rather than adoption of pre-defined practices.
Notes and references
See also
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