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Dr. Bernie Healey holds a copy of his new book, ‘The New World of Health Promotion: New Program Development, Implementation, and Evaluation.’
Don Carey/the times leader
WILKES-BARRE – Bernie Healey feels so strongly about health care that he wrote a book about it.
The book — “The New World of Health Promotion: New Program Development, Implementation, and Evaluation” — uses the concepts of epidemiology and collaboration to define the real causes of chronic diseases. Its goal is to help provide practitioners and students with a methodology to develop cost-effective programs to better inform the population of how to prevent these diseases and their expensive complications.
“I feel that the major problem in health care today is not being focused on,” Healey said. “The focus is on cure when it should be on prevention.”
Jones and Bartlett Publishers released the book, which Healey co-wrote with Robert S. Zimmerman Jr., former state secretary of health.
“The vision of a healthy America can only become reality if leadership and collaboration by all sectors becomes a reality,” Healey said. “Strong community partnerships will ensure that health promotion initiatives are developed, implemented, evaluated and continuously improved in order to achieve all of the objectives outlined in Healthy People 2010. This is the vision offered by this book.”
Healey is director of the graduate program in health care administration and a professor at King’s College. Zimmerman is a King’s College graduate.
Healey said the book was written for the college classroom. He said it can be used in teaching courses on health education, public health, health care administration, nursing and sociology. The book can be purchased online for $68.75.
“I don’t expect to become a millionaire,” Healey said. “But that’s not why I wrote the book.”
Healey said changing the way Americans approach their health is a main goal of the book. He cited the high number of people with Type II diabetes, calling it an epidemic across the U.S.
“Typically it affects older people,” Healey said. “But we are seeing it in children with serious weight problems.”
Healey said preventive measures — exercise, proper diet and stress reduction — can save hundreds of thousands of dollars. He said once someone gets a chronic disease, they have it for life.
“You can’t cure chronic diseases,” Healey said.
Smoking is another health issue that Healey has difficulty understanding.
“With all that we know about smoking and its health risks, I don’t know what people need to stop,” Healey said. He said the percentage of the population that smokes is down to 20 percent from its high of 37 percent.
The book discusses the necessary prerequisites for the development of a new health promotion initiative and explores some of the emerging priorities in health promotion programs. Healey said it explains the competencies that can help health promotion programs achieve their goals and increase their funding stream. He said it includes examples of effective health promotion programs.
“Health care workers and health educators will find that this essential text provides the necessary skills to develop, implement and evaluate health promotion programs,” Healey said.
Healey said he plans to use the book in his health promotion class next spring.
“One of the reasons that I wrote the book was that I could not find a book on health promotion that covered the special areas addressed in my new book,” he said.