Community Intervention Agents: Roles, Health Education & Psychosocial Concepts

Personalities of Community Intervention Agents

Administration: Public legislation is more effective when participation is easier. Services involve separating techniques and the general population, including associations and citizens.

Examples of Community Intervention Instruments

  • Board of Health
  • EPS (Health Promotion Entity)
  • Promotional Projects of health processes
  • Citizen participation in improving the quality of services
  • Community health agents
  • Self-help groups and associations working in health voluntarily

Health Council

  • Participation in planning services, programs, or activities in the area
  • Capturing and conveying the demands of services
  • Evaluating programs and organization
  • Collaborating in health promotion

Health Workers

  • Community members
  • Training for health services
  • Unpaid volunteers
  • Non-linkage with management

A person from the same social environment has a significant effect on changing attitudes and behaviors towards healthier habits and lifestyles.

Self-Help Groups (SHGs)

  • Oldest forms of community participation
  • Individual awareness process that has reached self-help and crystallized in organized groups
  • Self-help: self-care? Mutual aid?

Volunteering

  • May have other objectives besides health
  • Associations with non-profit social purposes may propose, collaborate, and organize actions in the field of health services
  • Examples: AMIP, AAVV, NGOs

Psychosocial Health Education: Concepts

  • Report: Providing information
  • Educate: Develop capacity for conscious and autonomous decisions regarding their health
  • Teach: Help thinking, meaningful learning

Health as a Bio-Psycho-Social Process

We must address the psychosocial content in health promotion to empower individuals to develop their potential, promote healthy lifestyles, reduce risk, and control disease.

Education Beyond Information

Health promotion content includes factors related to human behavior, categorized into three types:

  • Social environment factors
  • Immediate environmental factors
  • Personal factors

Social Environment

  • Socio-economic model
  • Normative social system
  • Socialization process: family, school, mass media

Immediate Environment

  • Examples: TV series

Personal Factors

  • Self and personal skills: The self, body image, sexed self, self-esteem
The Self

Conception a person has of their own personality. Equivalent to: I, consciousness of self, personal identity, self-concept.

Components of the Self
  • I: self-concept, self-esteem
Elements of the Self
  • Cognitive Area
  • Affective Area
  • Area of skills
  • Biological part
  • Know, know to be, know-how
Formation of the Self

Learned and complied with throughout all stages of life and is modified according to experiences. Influenced by society, morality, religion, family, school, and personal experience.

Body Image

The vision each of us has of our own physical appearance. Great emotional charge, mediates our relationships, influences self-esteem, very important in adolescence.

The Sexed Self

Great importance in adolescence, sexual identity, gender identity.

Self-Esteem

Evaluative attitude towards oneself, known self-image, auto-accept or not accept, willingly or not self-esteem.

Benefits of Good Self-Esteem
  • Promotes personal relationships
  • Facilitates learning
  • Promotes responsibility
  • Creativity
  • Helps to overcome difficulties
  • Personal autonomy
Consequences of Low Self-Esteem
  • Favors defense processes of insecurity
  • Processes of shrinkage (fantasy world)