What kind of work does a public health promoter do?

Question

What kind of diseases do they deal with?
What kind of interaction do the have with the community?

Answer 1

Health promotions and health education are practically synonymous. So what does a health EDUCATOR do? They educate people about health issues.

A health educator is trained to educate on a BROAD variety of diseases. You can generally break it into two factions: infectious diseases or chronic diseases (and in grad school, you learn to deal with both).

For example, a person who has a lot of training in chronic disease health ed usually will focus on things like diabetes prevention or management, obesity prevention or cancer. On the other hand, a person who focuses on infectious disease education will handle diseases like viral hepatitis, malaria, bioterrorism and general hygiene. There are a lot of health educators who work with HIV and AIDS patients, and their work integrates elements of both infectious and chronic disease health education.

As for community interaction, that can vary. By an large, you deal directly with the public through lectures and educational demonstration. However, there are health educators who design edcuational materials (pamphlets, curricula, website content), and they might not have as much contact with the public.

When I was working on my thesis, I was working with the STD program at the health department. My experiences have mostly dealt with infectious diseases. A lot of the education I was delivering centered around prevention methods and directing people to testing and treatment resources. I gave STD lectures to the community. I wrote curricula for teaching different audiences about STDs ( women, teens, etc.). I was the voice on the hotline answering people's phone calls about STDs. I even designed some pamphlets about STDs and prevention.

Answer 2

they help you aids and how you deal with