Can health education and promotion be part of schools’ curriculum?

After all that has happened in the past two years, after COVID-19 turned our lives upside down, it has become clear and imperative that we, as doctors, need to consider revisiting the way we work and practice. The disappearance of so many cases, during the pandemic, which used to fill our clinics, exhausted us and the health system: the one-day headaches, sore throat, joint pain, fatigue, one-day coughs, back pain, mild earache and others. All that proved that we have been dealing with cases less serious than patients think and most of them are self-limited and without impact on patients’ life or quality of life. Perhaps the “free ” healthcare system made these people fill our clinics without a convincing reason before they tried other ways of managing what they had. Read: Dr. Jabir Jassam: Dr. Yes Many questions came to my mind after these cases and patients disappeared during the pandemic. Where did those patients we used to see every week go? Are they really suffering in their homes now or did their fear of COVID-19 make them forget what they were complaining of? Were they really suffering? Did what they were complaining of need a visit to a clinic? Have we reached a stage where we cannot tell someone who comes in thinking that he is sick that he is not? Is it permissible for us to do say that? Should we not take such complaints in the future seriously? What if one of them is much more serious than even the patient himself or herself thinks? I understand that our doors should not be closed in the face of a sick person, but after two years it became clear to us that our doors were widely opened to the point that everyone entered through them—even those who did not need to enter. As doctors, do we really need to focus on these trivial cases which take us away from serious issues that need serious attention and more time? But who will be seeing these cases? Hiring a nurse practitioner or physician assistant who oversees these cases is a good solution, so doctors can focus on the more complicated cases such as uncontrolled diabetes or hypertension, mental health and what the NP or PA finds difficult to manage or on vague cases. But is that the ultimate solution? Without financial support, such solutions might not be feasible for most of doctors, Then what can we do besides that? I strongly believe that health education and promotion is the best long-term solution to save any health system. Health education needs to be implemented as early as primary school and high school in order to create a new generation that is able to understand the true meaning of health. That is, how to have a healthy way of life, how to avoid and prevent diseases, practice healthy habits and lifestyles. This generation will be the true kernel and seed of future generations in creating conscious and understanding people who resort less to unreliable and wrong sources of information on the Internet. By educating people about physical, mental, biological health, they will be more knowledgeable about when and how to seek medical advice. Implementing health education and promotion in schools will ultimately help the government save money by minimizing health problems and avoiding clinics and hospitals from filling up with simple cases that do not require spending those millions of dollars. I understand that it is not easy and it needs time, effort and money but what we are doing here is a real investment for our future generations and for our country and a practical and scientific use of taxpayers’ money and for their benefit as well. Is that possible? Dr. Jabir Jassam is a family physician in Ottawa.

Can health education and promotion be part of schools’ curriculum?

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