Establishing Community Outreach & Education Programs

Effective AIHA Partner Education Methods

AIHA partners learned to effectively combine relevant healthcare topics along with the resources available to them to best educate their communities on the benefits of the centers, as well as primary healthcare in general.

Use these examples from our partner institutions as a guide to help create your own community education programs:

1. Organize Clubs

Helpful Resources

Pioneering Model Primary Healthcare Programs, Astana Family Medicine Center Combines Medical and Social Services (AIHA Connections, May 2001)

In Astana, Kazakhstan, Primary Healthcare Center staff facilitated the development of five community-based health promotion clubs involving various audiences ranging from children and teenagers to young families and the elderly. These clubs are actively engaged in community outreach and preventive medicine education activities, particularly in schools, kindergartens, and polyclinics.

2. Deliver Weekly Presentations

Helpful Resources

New Chisinau Family Medicine Center Houses Teaching and Assessment Center (AIHA Connections, May 2003)

Partners in Chisinau, Moldova, deliver weekly presentations on relevant health topics including diabetes and hypertension to groups of patients and other members of the community.

3. Create Targeted Programs

Partners in Kharkiv, Ukraine, developed a health promotion and disease prevention unit to target education activities for “healthy child and adult" programs.

4. Conduct Lifestyle Education Programs for Students

Kharkiv partners conducted several health and lifestyle education programs for university students. The partners conducted a smoking cessation class for 82 students and a stress management class for 89 students.

5. Hire a Patient Education Coordinator

In Kharkiv, patient education rooms have been established in each of the model primary care clinics and a patient education coordinator has been identified for each one.

6. Seek out Innovative Programming

Staff at the Korobochkino Primary Healthcare Center in Ukraine’s Chuguev District initiated community education in farm safety and 40 farmers from the rural community participated in a farm safety presentation. They also launched a hypertension prevention program and measured the blood pressure of every person in the community over the age of 15. A total of 2,865 individuals were screened and 35 of them were diagnosed with hypertension.

7. Include Programming for All Genders and Ages

Again in Kharkiv, physicians were trained in STI prevention, detection, and treatment and organized a system of providing community education on this topic.

8. Give Lectures at Workplaces and Schools

Community education in Chuguev, Ukraine, involves giving lectures on family planning, sexually transmitted diseases and healthy lifestyles in the workplace and at schools. All educational lectures used have been redesigned to be age-specific.

9. Publish Articles and Brochures

One AIHA partner regularly sought out ways to get information about healthy lifestyles to student populations by publishing articles in the student newspapers and developing brochures.

Community Education Key to Sustainability

Keep in mind that community education is a critical component of your Primary Healthcare Center’s sustainability. If community members are unaware or uncertain of the value of the center and the services it provides, they will not support its development and continued operation. Understanding and support is needed at all levels throughout your community, so make it a priority to provide community education that targets every population group, ideally starting with those who need it most.

This is the end of the Community Outreach phase.

Click here to read about Monitoring & Evaluation.

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