Awareness-raising and health promotion training

The AHP course is one part of a broader Diabetes awareness raising campaign, the culmination of which is the exciting Beat Diabetes! event that was held in Khayelitsha on World Diabetes Day, 14 November, 2024. The course aimed to equip participants with the knowledge and skills to design awareness-raising and health promotion materials for use in awareness-raising and health promotion campaigns. This course focused on diabetes and its manifestations as core subject but can be applied to other topics of public health concern too.

The AHP course was offered in contact mode over 5 days, starting off with a series of lectures to put the issues of diabetes in context.  This was followed by a section dealing with the principles and techniques of Awareness-raising and Health Promotion, followed by a session covering “planning an AHP campaign”, and closing with media design and production demonstration and group-work sessions. On the last day, the participants l present their work, which was appraised by the course faculty. Download course outline here.

The AHP course participants included clinical and non-clinical staff responsible for developing and implementing awareness-raising and health promotion campaigns in their communities.

The course faculty included teachers with expertise in public health, community eye health, project management, advocacy and health promotion, and with skills and experience in health care management and designing media for information, education, and communication initiatives. See the course programme here.

This, our first AHP course, was specifically aimed at equipping a team of healthcare workers of the Khayelitsha and Eastern Sub-Structure (KESS) of the Cape Metropolitan Health District, to plan and implement a diabetes awareness-raising and health promotion event in Khayelitsha on World Diabetes Day, 14 November 2024. See a report about that event elsewhere.

Overall, the course was extremely well-received by the trainees, see results of trainee evaluation alongside. They were happy with the teaching and learning activities, as well as the logistical aspects op the training. The trainees seemed to like the topics equally, so they were evenly represented in the course. The three core topics, namely Health promotion "Principles", "Strategies" and "Barriers" were also the topics they had learned most from.

Some of the improvements suggested included "participants to bring their own laptops", "provide access to internet resources", and "allow more time for group work, especially during the design sessions"

The faculty of the course was also highly impressed with the success of this course, which was fully anticipated, and were eager to commit to participate in future versions of the course.  For 2025, the AHP course is scheduled twice in the CEHI Training programme: once in May and another in September.  The May one will be “open”, in terms of topics, and the September one will be targeted for those working in “blindness and visual impairment.”

UCT-CEHI also offers, amongst others, opportunity for academic studies in Community eye health, an "Advocacy & Strategic Planning" course, a "Diabetic Retinopathy Grading course", and a portfolio of online courses aimed at strengthening public health services. Please find the provisional UCT-CEHI Training summary for 2025 here.  For further information, or to make a comment or enquiry, please complete the feedback form at the bottom of the page.