RHP&EO is the electronic journal of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education

He-Naer: Health Related Community Work-Group In Vestfold. The Group.

Presented by Annett Arntzen, sociologist,

Dept. for social science, Vestfold College, pb 2243, 3103 Tonsberg, Norway

Background

Health policy documents have over the last years emphasised the importance of' preventive work. They also point at the necessity of combining individual- and community health work with health information.

Objective

The HE-naer group at Vestfold College has been formatted to increase the competence on health promoting and preventive work in the region through multidisiplinary cooperation within the municipal councils, based on community participation.

Methods

The basic principle for HE-naer is a dialogical community participation approach. Through engaging people and communities in defining and acting on their own health problems we believe the local health workers will achieve a lot more than they do today. But this still need assistance on development of procedures and analysis. The HE-naer-group will assist the local health workers in building competence on this type of approach. Our work can be labelled action research.

The HE-naer group

The group consists of 10 researchers at Vestfold College, representing four departments; dept. of health, dept. of education, dept. go engineering and dept. of social sciences; four of the members have their degree in pedagogy, two in sociology, one in engineering, one in nursing, one in economics and one in anthropology.

Fields and target groups

Our main target group is professionals in the kommunes and other organisations with health related tasks directed to local communities. We will both work with ' development of methods and skills for their implementation of health programs, and with their internal organisational development for multi diciplinary networking.

We have a one-year-study in preventive health offered as a part time study over two years. We also offer a half-year study as part time to health workers in kommunes combined with supervision in the field and networking between kommunes.

Organisational structure

We have as a group received grants from the college to build up a centre on preventive health as part of the college within four years. Our aim is to serve the region;

Vestfold, Ostfold, Buskerud and Telemark. We will try to build inks to national institutions working in the same field, like HEMIL and AFI(Work research institute in Oslo). We co-operate closely with Telemark college.

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