Importance of Health Education Research To Health Education

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Importance of Health Education Research To Health
Education

• Presented at the First Annual Meeting Of the
• American Academy of Health Behavior
• September 27, 2000
• Robert S. Gold
• Nancy L. Atkinson
• Public Health Informatics Research Laboratory

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Footsteps of giants . . .

• Relaxed venue, then raised the stakes
• How well do evidence-based practices generalize
  from the places where the research was done?
• Alternatives to best practices
• Challenged us to break the intervention-based
  planning habit

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How high is the bar . . .
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Glovers vision . . .

• and hard work ? successful meeting
• Appreciation for the opportunity to participate

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At issue . . .

• . . . Despite these accomplishments, an ongoing
  area of deficit for health educators is in
  defining, developing, conducting, and
  disseminating quality research. In this paper, it
  is argued that health education must expand its
  research horizons, engage in more
  interdisciplinary research, embrace the work of
  other social, behavioral, and educational
  scientists, and rise above the current
  healthedcentrism that permeates much of the
  profession
• RJ McDermott,(2000)

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New sins

• We are too committed to our own literature and
  our own kind
• We do not perform enough research that gets us
  beyond defining the problem
• We have failed at clearly defining the purpose of
  health education research and making it
  accessible
• We evaluate university faculty on their
  independent research achievements and not on
  their role as part of a team
• We lack a concept of research excellence
• We are enamored by technology but the research
  applications lag behind
• We spend too much of our effort in the
  self-interest of validating ourselves as a
  profession
• We dont dream the future

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Setting the bar

• Glover need to generate consensus on what were
  asking
• DiClemente need to look and learn from each of
  the other areas . . . We tend not to do that
• Hansen predicting the future . . . Being
  prepared for the role technology will play

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Laura Kann

• Role of research
• describing risk behaviors
• creating awareness
• establishing guidelines for setting program goals
• developing program goals and policies
• supporting health related legislation

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Objectives

• Identify five benefits of health education
  research
• Describe the threats that reduce their potential
• Provide recommendations on moving forward

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Ways of knowing

• The method of tenacity posits that truth comes
  from firmly held beliefs
• Authority is a method of belief based on the
  weight of the source of information
• A priori method, sometimes called intuition is
  able to identify truths because truths are
  self-evident
• The method of science

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Research as a process is . . .

• Logical
• Reductive
• Objective
• Empirical
• Benefited by replication

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Research design . . .

• A series of compromises
• Importance and potential comes from
• appropriate and systematic compromises
• documenting the nature of the compromises
• participatory processes

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Why do research in health education

• Ordinarily, the major objective of research is to
  describe or explain phenomena for prediction,
  control or understanding causal mechanisms
• To predict - describe conditions
• To control
• describe causal chain
• amenable to manipulation
• To understand - explain how the chain operates

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Dr. Shalala -The hedgehog and the fox

• Two reasons
• Todays topic requires stretching of the
  imagination
• She borrowed from a great philosopher . . .

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Tolstoys view of history

• The Fox knows many things, but the Hedgehog knows
  one big thing.
• Tolstoy desperately wanted to be a hedgehog
• As luck would have it - he had the soul of a fox,
  

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Tolstoys view of history

• This led Tolstoy to draw two important
  conclusions.
• no individual can control . . . human events.
• "the higher we are in the pyramid of authority,
  the farther we must be from its base.

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Leads us to think . . .

• It is the will of nations . . . that ultimately
  force change and move history
• Such is the story with research

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Another great philosopher . . .

• "90 percent of the game is half mental
• Its Déjà vu all over again
• It aint over til the fat lady sings

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1. It gets late early out there . . .

• When it works well, we engage in research to
  answer questions of importance.
• First benefit . . .
• it gives us the capacity to act prospectively
  with strength, but also reactively with
  knowledge.

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2. We were the overwhelming underdogs

• Turn our research ability inward and actually
  study the structure of our knowledge both
  explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge
• Knowledge becomes more accessible
• and, more likely to produce wisdom

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We were the overwhelming underdogs

• We must not become comfortable with an underdog
  role, of settling for the status quo
• Not using what we know
• Not applying what we know
• Not asking what others know
• Not telling others what we know

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3. You can observe a lot by watching

• The best research processes model how we should
  practice
• in a multidisciplinary, multiprofessional,
  collaborative environment, and based on
  participatory paradigms.

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• Organizing our research
• Learning how to apply it

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Consensus process

• Describing what happened
• Describing barriers and their solutions
• Describing what works and how it can be made to
  work in your setting
• Describing what has been tried
• Including interventions aimed at a broad spectrum
  of health states / issues
• Providing information on sustainability
• Describing unintended consequences
• Providing outcomes in usable form
• Describing how to deal with challenges

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• Organizing our research
• Learning how to apply it
• Collaborating
• Mentoring

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4. When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

• High quality research gives us options. Long ago
  we began to realize that one size does not fit
  all.
• To that end, research provides a road map for
  customizing, tailoring, and individualization of
  opportunities

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Call to action . . .

• Researchers cant ask questions that only benefit
  themselves
• Leaders need to create opportunity for growth

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Recommendations . . .

• To deal with the need to manage knowledge, let us
  create a system of knowledge growth, including
  both explicit and tacit knowledge.
• Support not only the publication of research
  literature, but also active participation with
  practitioners on the application of research
  results.
• Create a web-based look-up system for all work in
  progress.

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Recommendations . . .

• To deal with the kind of technology transfer that
  comes from mentoring, create a health education
  family research and practice genealogy.
• Create a national coordinated research agenda.
• Create a consensus process to organize what has
  been accomplished to date living history.
• Take advantage of research networks already in
  place.

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PRC / URC network . . .
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5. The future aint what it used to be.

• As for the future, your task is not to foresee,
  but to enable it.
• . . . we cannot let the future happen to us or
  let others determine what it will be.
• . . . establish and act on a vision of a health
  education research and development ensuring our
  future of choice.

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The future aint what it used to be . . .

• A well crafted and executed research and
  development agenda will enable our vision of the
  future.

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What does health education research do for health
education?

• gives us the capacity to act prospectively with
  strength, but also reactively with knowledge.
• knowledge becomes more accessible to researchers,
  practitioners, and consumers alike.
• research processes model how we should practice.
• road map for customizing, tailoring, and
  individualization.
• will enable our vision of the future.