1988/12/01 by Nina Wallerstein, Edward Bernstein · 2 citations
Health Professions · Medicine · Nursing · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Alcohol education #Autonomy #Community Health and Development #Empowerment #Health education #Health promotion #Medicine #Nursing #Pedagogy #Political science #Promotion (chess) #Psychology #Psychotherapist #Public health #Public relations #School Health and Nursing Education #Sociology #Substance abuse #Substance abuse prevention #Youth Development and Social Support
paper · doi:10.1177/109019818801500402
crossref issued 1988/12/01 · crossref published 1988/12/01 · crossref published-online 1988/12/01 · crossref published-print 1988/12/01 · openalex publication_date 1988/12/01 · crossref created 2007/02/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref deposited 2026/04/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/17 · crossref indexed 2026/08/02
Empowerment Education is proposed as an effective health education and prevention model that promotes health in all personal and social arenas. The model suggests that participation of people in group action and dialogue efforts directed at community targets enhances control and beliefs in ability to change people's own lives. The article is divided into three parts: a literature review demonstrating that powerlessness is linked to disease, and conversely, empowerment linked to health: an exposition of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire's empowering education theory with a comparison to traditional health education; and a case study of an empowering education substance abuse prevention project. The Alcohol and Substance Abuse Prevention (ASAP) Program is a University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Emergency Center, and community and school-based prevention project for adolescents. The case study will present ASAP's theoretical underpinnings and social practice, evaluation results, preliminary understandings of the stages for an empowering process, and future questions for practitioners interested in this approach. Empowerment education with its emphasis on organizing is recommended to be integrated into other prevention strategies of health promotion, disease prevention, and health policy.