SWEC 4 || Module 2 ||

MODULE 2 Weeks 4–6  •  Health Care Models and Health Education

 

 Ptra. Kathryn B Santiago, RSW MSW MMin
Instructor

MODULE OUTCOME Discuss the different health care models that are helpful for Medical Social Workers.

 

Intended Learning Outcomes

1. Compare preventive, curative, promotional, integrative, and development models of health care and give a social work role in each.

2. Explain the holistic approach to health and describe how alternative systems of health may be engaged ethically.

3. Apply basic principles, models, methods, and techniques of health education to a simple community or ward session.

4. Distinguish health empowerment from social marketing and design a small campaign that respects dignity.

Pre-Assessment

1. If a barangay has many children with diarrhea, is the first job of a social worker to bring ORS packets or to ask why water is unsafe? Defend your answer in three sentences.

2. What is “holistic” health in your own words?

3. Recall one health poster or TV advertisement you remember. Did it inform, scare, or empower?

Lesson 2.1  •  Healthcare Models

Preventive model

Prevention stops disease before it starts or detects it early. Primary prevention includes immunization, safe water, nutrition, and health education. Secondary prevention includes screening and early treatment (blood pressure campaigns, Pap smear, TB case finding). Tertiary prevention limits disability after disease is established (rehabilitation after stroke, adherence support after HIV diagnosis). The medical social worker in a preventive model organizes groups, reduces access barriers to screening, and addresses the social reasons people avoid prevention (shame, transport cost, fatalism, gender norms).

Curative model

The curative model focuses on diagnosis and treatment of established disease. Hospitals are built around this model. Social work here concentrates on treatment adherence, hospital adjustment, family conferences, discharge, and the financing of care. The risk of a purely curative model is that the worker becomes a “guarantor hunter” who only processes papers. Competence requires staying with the person while still helping the system treat the disease.

Promotional model

Health promotion enables people to increase control over their health. It is broader than prevention of a single disease. It includes supportive environments, healthy public policy, community action, and reoriented health services (Ottawa Charter logic). A promotional medical social worker helps a support group of persons with diabetes design a walking club, or helps a ward create family education corners, or advocates for a hospital breastfeeding policy.

Integrative model

An integrative model brings together body, mind, family, community, and, where appropriate, spiritual care. It also integrates levels of care: barangay health station, rural health unit, district hospital, and medical center. The social worker is often the person who actually stitches these levels together through referral and follow-up. Integrative practice also means working with the multidisciplinary team rather than in a parallel office that only appears when the bill is unpaid.

Development model

A development model treats health as both a goal and a means of social development. Illness is read against poverty, land, work, gender, and environment. The worker does not only help one patient buy antibiotics; the worker also asks why a community has repeated leptospirosis every rainy season. Development-oriented medical social work links casework to community organization and policy advocacy. This model matches the BSSW program outcome of promoting socio-economic and cultural rights.

Model	Primary question	Sample MSW task
Preventive	How do we stop this before it starts?	Organize a TB contact-tracing education session for families.
Curative	How do we treat what is already present?	Counsel a newly diagnosed cancer patient and plan discharge meds.
Promotional	How do people gain control over health?	Facilitate a hypertension self-management group.
Integrative	How do systems and whole-person care connect?	Coordinate RHU follow-up after hospital discharge.
Development	What social conditions produce this pattern of illness?	Advocate for safe work conditions after a cluster of occupational injuries.

Lesson 2.2  •  Holistic Approach and Alternative Systems of Health

A holistic approach refuses to split the person into a “case” and a “social problem.” Physical symptoms, emotions, family roles, work, culture, environment, and faith interact. In Filipino settings, this often includes family decision-making (hindi siya mag-isa), utang na loob, hiya, and reliance on prayer and traditional practices.

Alternative and traditional systems of health in the Philippines include hilot, herbal medicine recognized in community practice, faith healing, and complementary practices that patients may use alongside biomedical care. Republic Act No. 8423 created the Philippine Institute of Traditional and Alternative Health Care. The ethical stance of the medical social worker is neither mockery nor uncritical endorsement. Assess what the practice means to the family, whether it delays necessary biomedical treatment, whether it is harmful, and how the team can negotiate a safe combined plan. Respect does not require agreement with every claim.

Lesson 2.3  •  Health Education: Concept, Principles, Models, Methods, and Techniques

Health education is a planned process of communication that helps people make informed decisions about health. It is not the same as scolding. Principles include relevance to the learner’s life, accuracy, cultural and language fit (Filipino, Cebuano, Ilocano, or the community language), participation, and reinforcement.

Useful models

• Health Belief Model: people act when they feel susceptible, see severity, see benefits, and can overcome barriers, with a cue to action.

• PRECEDE-PROCEED: start from social and epidemiological assessment before designing education.

• Trans-theoretical (stages of change): precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance—useful in adherence counseling.

Methods and techniques

Individual counseling, family teaching at the bedside, small groups, demonstrations (handwashing, insulin, ORS mixing), story-telling and case vignettes, printed leaflets at low literacy level, radio or social-media spots, return demonstration, and peer education. Technique matters: ask-teach-ask, teach-back (“Puwede n’yo po bang ulitin sa akin kung paano n’yo iinumin ang gamot?”), and visual aids beat long lectures.

Lesson 2.4  •  Health Empowerment and Social Marketing

Health empowerment is the process by which people gain greater control over decisions and actions affecting their health. It builds knowledge, skills, confidence, and collective voice. A support group of women with breast cancer that learns to ask doctors questions and to lobby for a local chemotherapy fund is empowerment.

Social marketing uses marketing tools (product, price, place, promotion) to influence health behavior for social good—for example, promoting condom use, smoking cessation, or facility-based delivery. Used well, it makes the healthy choice easier and more attractive. Used poorly, it manipulates or blames. Medical social workers should insist that campaigns tell the truth, avoid shaming the poor, and pair messages with actual services. Empowerment without services is empty; marketing without ethics is propaganda.

 

FAITH INTEGRATION Biblical wisdom treats the body as a trust and the neighbor’s health as a duty of love. Health education that respects the image of God in every learner will not use fear as the only tool and will not treat the poor as objects of a campaign. “Speak the truth in love” is also a health-communication standard.

Learning Activities

Activity A  •  Model analysis (individual)

Choose one real health issue in your municipality (dengue, teenage pregnancy, hypertension, or TB). Write one paragraph for each of the five models describing what a medical social worker would do. Maximum two pages.

Activity B  •  Mini health-education session (triad)

Prepare a 10-minute teach-back session for family companions on one topic: hand hygiene, ORS, or blood-pressure home monitoring. Use one visual aid. Peers will score clarity, respect, and accuracy.

Activity C  •  Campaign critique

Bring a photo or printout of a Philippine health campaign. In class, identify product, price, place, and promotion. Then state one empowerment gap.

Assessment Tasks

1. Written exam items on models and health-education principles (Midterm coverage begins here).

2. Group demo of the 10-minute health-education session.

3. Reflection (400–500 words): When does health messaging become shaming?

Module 2 References

• Zastrow, C. The practice of social work (selected chapters on health).

• Sheafor, B. W., & Horejsi, C. R. (2003). Techniques and guidelines for social work practice.

• Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (WHO, 1986).

• Republic Act No. 8423 (PITAHC).