Praxis Health Education 5551 cheat sheet

Health education is the planned combination of learning experiences designed to enable voluntary health-enhancing behaviors; health promotion adds environmental, policy, and organizational supports around those experiences.

The seven Areas of Responsibility for health education specialists: needs assessment, planning, implementation, evaluation and research, advocacy, communication, and leadership/professionalism (with ethics and professional development embedded).

Scope of practice is defined by the profession's role delineation; certification (CHES/MCHES) verifies entry-level or advanced competency, while licensure is a state legal credential - certification is not a license to practice.

The health belief model predicts behavior from perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits, perceived barriers, plus cues to action and self-efficacy; barriers are usually the strongest single predictor.

Transtheoretical model stages: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance (termination optional); interventions are matched to stage, and relapse is an expected return to an earlier stage rather than failure.

Social cognitive theory: behavior is a reciprocal interaction of person, behavior, and environment; key constructs are self-efficacy, observational learning, outcome expectations, and reinforcement.

Socio-ecological model levels: intrapersonal, interpersonal, organizational/institutional, community, and public policy; durable behavior change requires alignment across multiple levels.

PRECEDE-PROCEED frames planning as diagnosis before intervention: social, epidemiological, behavioral/environmental, educational/ecological, and administrative/policy diagnosis, then implementation and process, impact, and outcome evaluation.

Health literacy is the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information to make decisions; plain language and teach-back address low health literacy, not just low reading level.

Leading actual causes of death in the U.S. are tobacco, poor diet and physical inactivity, and alcohol consumption - behavioral contributors rather than the physiological causes listed on death certificates.

Physical activity guideline: adults need 150–300 minutes/week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity or 75–150 minutes/week vigorous, plus muscle-strengthening on 2 or more days per week.

Dietary guidance: limit added sugars to under 10% of daily calories, saturated fat under 10% of calories, sodium under 2,300 mg/day, and aim for 25–38 g/day fiber depending on sex and age.

CDC-recommended adult immunization highlights: influenza annually; Td/Tdap booster every 10 years; COVID-19 per current schedule; shingles vaccine from age 50; pneumococcal for adults 65 and older.

STI facts: HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection and is preventable by vaccine; chlamydia is the most commonly reported bacterial STI, and many cases are asymptomatic, so screening is essential.

Chronic disease: type 2 diabetes involves insulin resistance and is modifiable through weight loss, activity, and diet; hypertension is defined as sustained readings of 130/80 mmHg or higher under current U.S. guidance.

Communicable disease control chain: infectious agent, reservoir, portal of exit, mode of transmission, portal of entry, susceptible host; hand hygiene and isolation interrupt transmission, while vaccination reduces host susceptibility.

Mental health: depression is among the most common and treatable conditions; warning signs of suicide risk (ideation, plan, hopelessness, withdrawal) require immediate referral, and asking directly about suicide does not increase risk.

Injury and substance content: alcohol-impaired driving and prescription opioid misuse are leading preventable injury causes; naloxone reverses opioid overdose, and BAC-based legal impairment thresholds are set by state law.

Needs assessment sequence: define purpose and population, gather existing data (surveillance, records), collect new data (surveys, focus groups, key informant interviews), then prioritize needs by magnitude, severity, and changeability.

SMART objectives: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound; a behavioral objective names the behavior, the conditions, and the criterion (for example, 80% of participants will demonstrate correct technique).

Bloom's taxonomy levels - knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation - map to cognitive objectives; psychomotor and affective domains require their own verbs and assessment methods.

Health belief model and stages-of-change constructs are used at the planning stage to select which mediators the curriculum will target; the intervention should change the specific construct, not just deliver information.

Implementation fidelity means delivering the program as designed; record dose delivered, dose received, and adaptations, because drift and unintended modification weaken outcome attribution.

Cultural competence and tailoring: involve the priority population in design, use preferred language and literacy level, and address structural barriers (transportation, cost, hours) rather than only knowledge gaps.

Logic model components: inputs/resources, activities, outputs, short-term outcomes, intermediate outcomes, and long-term impact; each arrow is an assumed causal link that evaluation must test.

Health communication best practice: segment the audience, use a single clear behavioral message, pair it with an actionable cue, and pretest materials with members of the target population before wide release.

Ethical implementation requires informed consent, confidentiality protections, voluntary participation, and referral pathways when screening or education reveals a health need beyond the program's scope.

Evaluation types by timing: formative (during development or delivery, used to improve), process (was it delivered as planned), impact (short-term knowledge, attitudes, behavior change), and outcome (long-term health status and quality-of-life change).

Validity is whether an instrument measures what it claims; reliability is consistency across time (test-retest) or across items (internal consistency, Cronbach's alpha of about 0.70 or higher is commonly acceptable).

Sensitivity is the ability to correctly identify those with the condition; specificity is the ability to correctly identify those without it; positive predictive value depends on prevalence as well as sensitivity and specificity.

Threats to internal validity include history, maturation, testing effects, instrumentation change, selection bias, attrition, and regression to the mean; a comparison group controls some but not all of these.

Study designs ranked by causal strength: randomized controlled trial, quasi-experimental with comparison group, single-group pretest-posttest, and cross-sectional survey; the last cannot establish temporal order.

Sampling: random selection supports generalizability; random assignment supports causal inference; convenience samples limit external validity and should be described as such in reporting.

Descriptive statistics summarize (mean, median, mode, range, standard deviation); inferential statistics test whether observed differences exceed chance, with p < 0.05 conventionally treated as statistically significant, though effect size and confidence intervals convey practical meaning.

Qualitative methods (focus groups, interviews, observation) answer why and how; quantitative methods answer how many and how much; mixed methods combine both to explain and generalize.

Reporting should state reach, participation, fidelity, and limitations (sample, design, measurement) so readers can judge whether findings transfer to their own population.