The Role of Health Education in Addressing Uncertainty About Health and Cell Phone Use—A Commentary

Abstract

Although the fundamental principles of health education remain unchanged, the practice of health education continues to evolve in response to our rapidly changing lifestyles and technological advances. Emerging health risks are often associated with these lifestyle changes. The purpose of this article is to address the role of health educators when scientific uncertainty exists about these emerging topics. Specifically, how can health educators ensure that their information is both current and credible, and what can health educators do to educate the public about minimizing potential risk factors. We are in a constantly-updating information age when Internet access provides near-instantaneous access to information about a variety of health-related topics. The ease of contributing to the online store of information means that not all sources are of equal weight. Depending on the host site, posts may or may not be vetted. Consequently, the health educator must learn how to keep up with all these changes. As one of the seven core areas of responsibility for Certified Health Education Specialists (CHES), serving as a health education resource person (Responsibility VI) includes retrieving information electronically and evaluating resources (Competency A). (1) An important role for today's health educator is to teach individuals how to evaluate this vast quantity of health-related information and make sense of information that may be contradictory, even when coming from reputable sources. Before we can educate others, we must ensure that our own knowledge base is up to the task. Health educators cannot be experts in every possible health-related topic. Therefore, we must first hone our own cyber skills to keep up with the constant flow of new, and often contradictory, information on various health-related topics. It would also be beneficial to maintain a working relationship with our academic and professional colleagues who could assist us as subject matter experts for various health-related topics. Health educators may find the following guiding questions helpful when evaluating information sources for reliability and validity, as well as to weigh the relevance of any conflicting results. * Methodological strength: What study design was used and why? How were samples selected? How was data collected, analyzed and interpreted? What are the stated limitations of the research? How broadly can the findings be applied? Are the findings a preliminary study or part of a larger body of work? Has the research, conducted with sound methodology, been replicated with consistent findings? Published articles address this topic in greater detail. (2-4) * Date of research: New research is constantly updating our knowledge base of health-related information. When we have contradictory information that has all been through a comparable peer-review process and is of comparable methodological soundness, we should give more weight to the most current information. * Source bias: Who conducted the research, and what are the researchers' credentials? Where do the researchers work (government agency, academia, non-profit group, for-profit group, or a combination of these)? Who funded the research, directly or indirectly? What are the stated (and hidden) agendas for the organization(s)? Where is the research being published, and what review process was used to evaluate it before it was published or posted? If a source is summarizing or providing an overview of research, is all important information included? We can now proceed to use these techniques to evaluate one of the current hot topics in environmental health: Potential health impacts resulting from cell phone use. Theoretically, incidence of cancer initiated by hand-held cellular phone use would likely be in the head and neck area, particularly the brain tissue. (5,6) A hypothetical model (7) has been introduced to explain how nonthermal effects may potentially cause cancer in long-term cellular phone users via chronically activating heat shock proteins. …