Educating for Health: Developing Educational & Community Based Program for Older Adults

This essay discusses the concept of educational and community-based programs for improving the health of older adults aged above 65. It explores the background information related to health education and identifies the complex problems or issues in the context of health. The essay also highlights the importance of assessing learning needs and provides insights into meeting the learning needs of the chosen group. It further discusses the teaching plan for health education and its objectives.

Educating for Health

Table of contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
BACKGROUND.............................................................................................................................3
Assessing learning needs for Older Adult.......................................................................................5
Meeting the learning needs of the chosen group.............................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
Appendix-1 Teaching Plan..............................................................................................................9
REFRENCES.................................................................................................................................11

Title- To develop educational & community based program about the health promotion among
older people aged above 65 in regards of improvement in the chronic illness.
INTRODUCTION
The education & community bases programs plays an important role in order to prevent
disease, injury, improving health condition from chronic disease, enhancing quality of life.
Health status and related behavior of older groups are identified by influences at different levels
such as personal, environmental and policy. This is because of significant aspect in which create
a dynamic interrelationship exits among health determinants. The educational and community-
based programs are likely to succeed in improving health & wellness, when they can easily
addressed influence at multiple levels and variety of environment settings.
In this essay, it will discuss about the concept of educational & community program, in
order to target the older aged people whose aged above 65 years in workplaces. It will describe
about background information related to health education, and identify the particular complex
problem or issue in context of health.
BACKGROUND
Understanding education & Community-based programs: -
Health & quality of life which may rely on the different community systems. It is not
simply on the basis of functioning health as well as medical care system (Berg-Weger and
Morley, 2020). It may support for improving health programs and policies, it can effectively
improve the entire health of different older aged people community.
For an older aged groups to improve the health condition of older people, it must often
change the aspect of physical and social environment. In order to eliminate or reduce factors that

contribute to health problem or issues. It has been introduced new elements which is always
promotes better health condition.
The profession of informing the people about the health is known as health education.
The education of health involves the knowledge about environmental health, social health,
physical health, intellectual health, emotional health along with the reproductive as well as
sexual health. The education of health can be considered as the principles that can help the group
of people and individuals to behave in a manner that can promote maintain and restore the
health. The definitions of health are wide and thus the definitions for the health education are
also wide. The joint community on Health Education and Promotion Terminology of 2001, in
America, define health education as the learning experience that is planned with the theories that
help the individuals, communities and groups of people in having the opportunity to acquire the
information as well skills for making quality decisions for their health (Yingklang and et.al,
2018). The World Health Organisation defines health education as opportunity for learning that
is consciously constructed and has design for the communication to improve the literacy in
health, knowledge improvement, and development of the life skills that conducive to the
community health as well as individuals.
It is a responsibility on the health care providers for providing the education for the
health and wellbeing for the elderly people appropriately. The learning ability of the elder adults
is poor and they need to be overcome this obstacle for providing the effective education to the
older group. The changes in the learning can happen while educating the older group of people.
The order of aging in the elderly people is depended upon the environmental factors as well as
the genetics. The elder people can have problems like difficulty in hearing and seeing with the
aging. The responding skills can also slow down with time. The psychological changes to the
elderly people affect the health education. The impact can be seen with the change in the
memory, problem solving, learning and attitude. The socio-cultural changes for the elderly
people also impact the learning capability of the people. The elderly people with the health
condition seek for self- independency and the health care provider need to educate them for the
self-management skills (Richmond and et.al, 2020). The ability of the elderly people for solving
the problem is dependent upon the education closely. The people who think them as a wise and
experienced individual than the education can be built upon the positive experience and new
ways can be adopted for improving the health of the individual.

The education activities of the elderly group of people need to use structured approaches
and it is done by the health education models such as health behaviour models and health belief
model. The structured approaches are used for predicting as well as understanding the health
behaviours of the elderly people. The conduction of the learning needs assessment is required by
the health care educator for providing the elderly people with the best educational activities by
which they can learn effectively. The targeted health conditions of the elderly people can be
identified using the assessment and worked in accordance. In the planning of the process of the
health education the needs and the requirement of the elderly person are identified. The planning
needs to consider the factors such as socio-economic level as well as cultural background. This
help in choosing the materials for the education carefully and the instruction are made parallel to
the understanding level of the elderly individual. The plan is implemented on the individual for
enabling them to get the targeted behaviour (Kacprowska, 2019). The plan is evaluated by
measuring at what extent the objectives for the elderly individual are achieved. The skills
required for the achieving the objective can be developed during the evaluation. Post training test
are conducted for measuring the knowledge of the individuals in the education program. In the
evaluation process the expectations of the individual with the education program can be cleared.
Assessing learning needs for Older Adult
Definition- Health literacy is typically an interactive process or method, its primary goal
is to identify the patient capacity and also understand basic health information needed to make
proper health decisions (Burnes and et.al., 2019). Nowadays, it is very important aspect to
understand the concept of patient education which become consistently linked with patient’s
health literacy needs.
During all phases of teaching- learning process such as planning, implementation and
evaluation. These are considered the different steps in order to focus on the existing medical
problem of older age group people but it is important to identify various kind of functional as
well as psychological issues. These are common problem during old age. In case, if patient is not
reliable informant, its family members should need to include medical history, social history.
This will help to find the potential problem with home environment, financial resources and
various kind of stresses. It may be contributing towards medical problem. On the basis of diet
history, it is very important for identifying some essential need or requirement. It is one of the
good practice to ask elderly patient who bring all kind of medications.

With advancing the age, there are corresponding normal declined the some functionality
of older age people such as hearing, vision and touch. At that point, the most common problem
arise related to Vision and hearing. In additional, it is also decline in physical dexterity as well as
endurance. The age of 65 and above people face a different kind of chronic disease. These are
directly affecting normal human functionality of human body. It is also identified certain kind or
normal changes with aging (Notthoff, Reisch and Gerstorf, 2017). On the basis of situation, it is
important to identify particular health related needs and also learned how will provide the better
facilities or services. by using Educational and community based learning program will support
to build awareness in regards of aging changes in human body.
The benefits of assessing learning needs are helping to recognize the performance of
targeted group. When they can do same kind of tasks which given at the time of teaching plan. it
aligned with training development that will enable health promotion achieve its desirable goal or
objective. The advantage of training needs or future needs of patient and fulfill all essential
requirements. it act as guide to decide what kind of teaching and learning plan applicable on the
different peoples.
Doing a psychological assessment, it is an important aspect about understand the patient’s
ability in order to follow a proper recommendation treatment plan. There are lot of reason why
older patient may not a follow proper plan (Notthoff, Reisch and Gerstorf, 2017). Therefore, it
would require to implement education and community based program, which may support for
providing a better promotion to awareness of chronic disease such as physical illness, mental
illness or behavior changes. This kind of educational program will simply provide the direction
where older age people can change their lifestyle, instead select or choose to long standing
habits, patterns.
Finally, older age people, although, may be able to carry out all necessary treatment
suggestion or recommendations. The most important aspect is to encourage the older community
and participate or join education health related program. This is not only providing better
direction for people but it is also helping to fulfill all necessary demand of people. The most
common issue in health care management because of their older age, they are unable to fulfill
their all personal resources, including presence or support for any other.
Here are discussed about the older aged community health related situation illustrate these
issues:-

67 years old patient with a new diabetic diet has received day of planned of teaching. On
regular basis, it is needed to focus on the person activities like breakfast the day after she
returned home, a patient said that she planned to make her husband. In this situation, she will try
to learn and teach by other, where how to prepare food and whether she intended to change her
cooking habits.
A 69-year old patient was discharged from hospitals after he/she was required to follows
a procedure of daily dressing. In case, if a patient is returned to clinic visit, she or he was not
feeling so good. At that time, it is an essential aspect to learn where how will be managed all
kind of necessary activities.
Meeting the learning needs of the chosen group
Teaching plan in the health education is important for the elderly patients as it help in
understanding the general situation, information of the individuals and what content of the
education material be best suited for them. The teaching plan gives an idea to the elderly people
about the education they are going to get, for example, who is going to educate, what is going to
be taught to them, why they are learning or what is the aim, the methodology used for teaching,
where to implement, time of the education and the daily duration of education. The health
education needs to be designed by following the principles for meeting the needs of the elderly
people. The principles are:
Functionality – the plan must have the quality for achieving the educational goals. The goals in
the plan need to be measurable, beneficial, valid for real life and action-based.
Flexibility – the plan need to be flexible as well as creative so it can answer to the changing
needs of the elderly individual along with having the capability to adopt according to new
developments.
Realistic – the plain should not consist of utopic aims and over-idealistic aims.
Practicability – the health education plan should be easy to use by the ones who prepared the
plan along with the other people at different times easily (Peluso and et.al, 2017).
Being scientific – the plan should have the scientific qualities for gaining the knowledge and
behaviour as expected for the elderly individual or group.
Suitability to the social values – the [plan should be in the alignment to the life philosophy,
beliefs, ideals as well as the values of the society where the plan is implemented.

Being economical – the implementation of the health education plan for the required behaviour
need be affordable to achieve.
It is important in the health education plan that the objectives are learner-centred for
meeting the needs of the elderly individual. The objectives need to meet the changes in the
behaviour of the elderly individual or the group of people. The objective needs to have the
priority for the determination of the elderly people as well as the content of the education. The
objective is decided on the techniques and the methodology used in the health education. The
goals are made of short and long-term for meeting the needs perfectly for the elderly individual
or groups. For example, teaching the individual how to inject insulin for their type two diabetes
is short term goals while managing the illness effectively is the long-term goal. The objectives
are developed according to the individual’s cognitive, psychomotor as well as affective skills
(Health Education England, 2017). The knowledge as well as the mental abilities developed by
the knowledge in the health education, comes under the cognitive field.
The aim of the teaching is to help the elderly people with the chronic illness and the
objective of the teaching is to meet the changing needs of the elderly people. The aim and
objectives are chosen because the elderly people have the different difficulties for handling the
education given to them many factors impact the learning of the elder people and to cope up with
this they require the planning for the health education. The objective is to change the plan
according to the changing needs of the elderly people. The educator needs to keep various things
in mind. The educator can help the elderly people by using different methods such as
discussions, answers, questions, role-play, demonstration and many other methods can be used in
the education process for meeting the goals. The elderly people need to have the active
participation as well as feedback in the learning process for effective learning along with
educator should have supportive communication style for effective learning by opening up the
elderly people.
The educator needs to determine the location as well as time for the health education
program. The educator needs to choose the convenient place along with time according to the
needs of the elderly individual or the group of people. The place should be having all the
necessary equipment’s for the helping the elderly people such as acoustic features, stick’s ,
wheelchairs, walker’s and enough space for the writing activities. The teaching plan can be
evaluated using the quantitative as well as qualitative assessment techniques (Car and et.al,

2019). The two methods are used together for minimising the disadvantage of both the methods.
The success of the implementation of the plan is measured through the extent of the objective
achieved.
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded from the report that the educational and community based program is
developed for the older aged people of above 65 years age, the program is developed for the
healthy maintenance of the elder people with chronic illness. The back ground of the health
education is described and the different defines of the health education is given. The learning
needs of the elderly people are identified and acted upon them for fulfilling the needs and
requirements for the chronic illness. The principles for the formation of the plan for the teaching
of health education are described for effective learning of the elders.
Appendix-1 Teaching Plan
Specific
objectives
Learning
objectives
Teaching
learning
activities
Time
allotment
Resources Evaluation
parameters
Identification
of different
signs and
symptoms.
The elderly
people can
understand the
signs and react
according to the
seriousness of
the illness. They
can understand
the differences
between the
regular
weaknesses due
to the age the
sickness due to
the illness.
Teaching the
elders about the
signs related to
their current
health
conditions.
Teaching them
about the signs
that are serious
and they have to
react on them.
Two classes
in a day of
one hour.
Educator and
the place for
health
education.
The
learning of
the elderly
individual
or the group
can be
evaluated
by testing
and the
extent in
which the
individual
are able to
handle the
situations.
How to inject The elders are Showing elderly Weekly class The required Checking

the medication
for the required
treatment.
able to inject
themselves with
the required
medication for
the treatment.
people how to
use the injection
and where to
place the needle
for the injecting.
Using the
injection on the
dummies for the
practice.
of two hours. resources for the
treatment can be
the injecting
injections and
dummies for the
practice.
time to time
on the
individuals
if they are
injecting
the
medication
in correct
way and are
showing
signs of
health and
independent
individual.
Providing
knowledge of
the functions in
their body.
They can get
knowledge
about the
cardiovascular
as well as
respiratory
functions.
Showing the
individuals
videos and more
interesting ways
of learning the
functions.
This class can
be take place
two times a
week for one
hour.
The use of
computer,
projectors for
the showing the
video.
The
knowledge
of the
learner can
be tested by
asking them
questions
and having
discussions
over the
topic being
taught.
Helping the
elderly
individuals
with their
problems
The elderly
people will get
more
independent as
well as self-
Teaching the
elderly
individuals how
to eat food, take
care of their
Two classes
in a week of
half an hour.
The
equipment’s
they might
require for
easing up their
The elderly
people will
require less
help from
others in

related to the
changing
physical needs
with the aging.
sufficient for
meeting their
own needs.
health by having
open
communication
with the
educator for any
issue they are
suffering from.
daily task and
communication
skill
development.
their day to
day task.
and started
feeling
positive.
Overcoming
the challenges
of learning.
The elderly
people can learn
according to the
changing needs.
The
psychological
needs and social
needs of the
learner are taken
under the
consideration
for the learning
activities for
introducing
different
techniques.
Three classes
per week of
half an hour.
The educator
needs to observe
the change in
the behaviour of
the learners at
the health
education
centre.
The
changes in
the
behaviours
of the
elderly
individuals
can be
detected
and
managed.
REFRENCES
Books and Journals
Berg-Weger, M. and Morley, J.E., 2020. Loneliness and social isolation in older adults during
the Covid-19 pandemic: Implications for gerontological social work.
Burnes, D. and et.al., 2019. Interventions to reduce ageism against older adults: A systematic
review and meta-analysis. American Journal of Public Health. 109(8). pp.e1-e9.

Car and et.al, 2019. Digital problem-based learning in health professions: systematic review and
meta-analysis by the digital health education collaboration. Journal of medical Internet
research.
Health Education England, 2017. Stepping forward to 2020/21: The mental health workforce
plan for England.
Kacprowska, 2019. Educational opportunities for seniors and the most common non-formal
organization of senior education–Polish perspective. Biblioteka Gerontologii Społecznej
Polish Social Gerontology Journal.
Notthoff, N., Reisch, P. and Gerstorf, D., 2017. Individual characteristics and physical activity in
older adults: a systematic review. Gerontology. 63(5). pp.443-459.
Peluso and et.al, 2017. Reframing undergraduate medical education in global health: rationale
and key principles from the Bellagio Global Health education initiative. Medical
teacher. 39(6). pp.639-645.
Richmond and et.al, 2020. Ability of Older Adults to Report Elder Abuse: An Emergency
Department–Based Cross‐Sectional Study. Journal of the American Geriatrics
Society. 68(1). pp.170-175.
Yingklang and et.al, 2018. Effect of a health education program on reduction of pediculosis in
school girls at Amphoe Muang, Khon Kaen Province, Thailand. PloS one. 13(6).
p.e0198599.