Spreading the word: Teaching health promotion to students from disciplines other than health.
Intersectoral collaboration has gained acceptance as a strategic approach in promoting health, based on the assumption that the main determinants of health are social, physical and politico-economic factors and not medical care utilization. However, the difficulties of collaborating intersectorally for better health have become apparent over the last two decades. This paper describes an attempt to address these difficulties through an awareness-raising educational initiative devised for undergraduate university students from disciplines other than health. The course aims to raise students' appreciation of the ways in which their future occupations could have an impact on the health of others through intersectoral collaboration and the creation of environments that are supportive of health. The evaluation of the course, which comprised a peer-review process, a questionnaire seeking student feedback, and a task exploring students' ideas on how they could influence the health of others, demonstrated that students recognized the value of working intersectorally for better health. If intersectoral collaboration is really expected to be the way forward that many public health theorists claim, then this small but effective contribution should best be seen as one of a series of incremental building blocks leading to the desired effects.
Furber
S E
SE
School of Medical Education, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. s.furber@unsw.edu.au
Ritchie
J E
JE