Health Education approaches in school textbooks of 14 countries: biomedical model versus health promotion

Classically, Health Education has been based in the Biomedical Model (BM) of Health, where the pathologic, Curative and Preventive conceptions are its main pillars. The more recent approach of Health Promotion (HP) looks for identification of Healthy habits, develop empowerment for healthy decision-making towards environmental challenges. The aim of the present study was to compare the emphases on either model (BM or HP) given by textbooks on the topic of Health Education of 14 countries. Results showed that the countries with higher percentage of BM approach were France (99.2%), Malta (98.5%) and Italy (91.0%) whereas the countries showing more tendency for the HP approach were Germany (64.6%), Morocco (51.0%) and Finland (50.1%).European project FP6 Biohead-Citizen CIT2-CT-2004-506015.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - LIBEC/CIFPEC - unidade de investigação (16/644)