ABSTRACT
In one form or another, health education has had a long association with public health. It is, however, an ambiguous term associated as it is with health promotion, health literacy and social marketing. The emergence of health promotion in particular, alongside the re-emphasis on behaviour change over the past 30 years, has contributed to creating a complex milieu in which health education continues to be debated. Furthermore, sustaining behaviour change has also been shown to be problematic, particularly among some groups. A plethora of psychologically-based models have been developed and applied in the health field: the theory of reasoned action, the health belief model and stage-based models such as the transtheoretical model (TTM). In the health education literature the terms self-empowerment and community empowerment are used to convey the different levels at which greater control over decisions and actions affecting health might work.
