Community Health Education

Health Education through Public Health is about promoting individual health, healthy communities, and healthy environments.  

Priority health concerns for 2016 – 2020 for the seven southernmost counties of Illinois include:

• Obesity
• Cancer
• Type II Diabetes
• Heart Disease

With smoking, poor diet and sedentary lifestyles being the most common risk factors for disease, programming within the health education division educates persons on how to make changes and ways to break barriers toward a healthier lifestyle.  By reducing tobacco use and secondhand smoke exposure, increasing physical activity, improving nutrition, and reducing obesity incidence, our risk of disease will decrease.  As the risk of disease decreases, our quality of life years will increase. While it’s true some factors cannot be changed such as age, gender, and family history, it is also true a person can make a difference by making changes in their own health.

Health Education programs include working with schools, churches, and communities to implement evidence based programming.  Through programming and systems changes our communities can better be able to promote healthy lifestyles, increase life expectancy, live healthier and fit lives, and improve the health of generations to come. 

To view priority health concerns for our seven counties and strategies to address these concerns go to Illinois Project for Local Assessment of Needs (IPLAN),  or Illinois Department of Public Health IPLAN website. 

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For more info:

Natalie Sawyer, Health Education Director
 (618) 634-2297, ext. 136

Community Partners: