Health Education
China has 900 million rural residents with healthcare needs. Many organizations including China’s local and central governments are exploring different models to improve the rural healthcare systems. Dramatic reform of healthcare insurance policy for rural areas in the past decade is one of such efforts from China’s central government. Making it affordable to treat common illness is critically important for rural residents. However, it has been widely known that prevention, early detection and treatment are always the most cost-effective ways to improve people’s health condition in general. EEF considers the concept of healthcare education aligns well with its overall mission of delivering knowledge to the most-needed places. Based on a collaborative investigation with TongWei High School in GanSu province, EEF started a healthcare education initiative in 2009. The goal is to deliver educational healthcare knowledge to the school students and to the local community in China’s rural areas through the existing EEF public library system.
Pilot Project: Tongwei Health Education ( July 2009 - July 2012)
A 3-year project starting from July 2009, the project is to promote healthcare awareness and deliver basic healthcare knowledge to the school students and the local community in Tongwei County, Gansu through Tongwei public and school library system supported by Evergreen. Also based on the local needs, EEF worked with local authority to build a local school clinic, and sponsor annual physical examination for students conducted by the school clinic and the County Epidemic Prevention Station.
By June 2010, the books and periodicals on healthcare we purchased for Tongwei No. 1 High School Library and Tongwei Public Library have been in circulation in both central library and satellite libraries. The school clinic at Tongwei No. 1 High School has been basically equipped and in good operation. Also together with the County Epidemic Prevention Station it has completed the 2009 health examination for students, and built a health record for each student. Tongwei No. 1 High School Library compiled and printed "Healthcare Brochure for High School Students", conducted the trial for healthcare education class, also organized the students to make "Healthcare Hand-written Newspaper" by searching healthcare information via Internet and library. Tongwei Public Library has compiled and printed "Healthcare Digest" bimonthly and distributed it to patrons and community members, also hosted "Healthcare Seminars" in which video seminars were played for patrons and community members.
