From Ottawa, Uppsala, and Alma-Ata to Canberra, Australia: A rationale for a degree in Health Education

This paper describes the principles of curriculum design applied in establishing the Degree of Bachelor of Applied Science in Health Education in Canberra, Australia in 1979. The design was based explicitly on three major initiatives in health planning and policy in the last decade: (i) the recommendations to the Canadian Government proposed by Lalonde in 1974, commonly called the Health Field Concept; (ii) the World Health Organization definition of Health, first stated in 1948, and reissued at Uppsala in 1977; and (iii) the World Health Organization policy statement from the Alma-Ata Seminar in 1978, which included social planning and legislative action among the legitimate concerns of health sevices.

The authors, who are at present teaching the integrated units of the degree, describe the principal components, namely content, theoretical principles, professional skills and methods of knowledge integration which they are using to develop graduates who may be considered either health educated or health educators. In either case, the program is intended to produce people who can provide a health development arm for, on the one hand, social planning and social change, and on the other. health-care services.